Amazon Fuels North America’s Most Severe Warehouse Shortage

  • Toronto’s dearth of logistics properties hampers businesses
  • Canadians have embraced e-commerce during the pandemic

   

Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

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Finding warehouse space around Toronto has never been harder, and the e-commerce fueled shortage is disrupting businesses and threatening the broader economy.

With the pandemic driving a belated embrace of online shopping in Canada, Amazon.com Inc. has been gobbling up warehouses. That’s pushed the vacancy rate in the Toronto area down to just 0.5%, making it the tightest market in North America, if not the world.