B.C. seeks ban on public drug use, dialing back decriminalization
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
Amazon plans to eliminate 9,000 more jobs in the next few weeks, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff on Monday.
The job cuts would mark the second largest round of layoffs in the company's history, adding to the 18,000 employees the tech giant said it would lay off in January. The company's workforce doubled during the pandemic, however, in the midst of a hiring surge across almost the entire tech sector.
Tech companies have announced tens of thousands of job cuts this year.
In the memo, Jassy said the second phase of the company's annual planning process completed this month led to the additional job cuts. He said Amazon will still hire in some strategic areas.
"Some may ask why we didn't announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago. The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall; and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we've made them so people had the information as soon as possible," Jassy said.
The job cuts announced Monday will hit profitable areas for the company including its cloud computing unit AWS and its burgeoning advertising business. Twitch, the gaming platform Amazon owns, will also see some layoffs as well as Amazon's PXT organizations, which handle human resources and other functions.
Prior layoffs had also hit PXT, the company's stores division, which encompasses its e-commerce business as well as company's brick-and-mortar stores such as Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go, and other departments such as the one that runs the virtual assistant Alexa.
Earlier this month, the company said it would pause construction on its headquarters building in northern Virginia, though the first phase of that project will open this June with 8,000 employees.
Like other tech companies, including Facebook parent Meta and Google parent Alphabet, Amazon ramped up hiring during the pandemic to meet the demand from homebound Americans that were increasingly buying stuff online to keep themselves safe from the virus.
Amazon's workforce, in warehouses and offices, doubled to more than 1.6 million people in about two years. But demand slowed as the worst of the pandemic eased. The company began pausing or cancelling its warehouse expansion plans last year.
Amid growing anxiety over the potential for a recession, Amazon in the past few months shut down a subsidiary that's been selling fabrics for nearly 30 years and shuttered its hybrid virtual, in-home care service Amazon Care among other cost-cutting moves.
Jassy said Monday given the uncertain economy and the "uncertainty that exists in the near future," the company has chosen to be more streamlined.
He said the teams that will be impacted by the latest round of layoffs are not done making final decisions on which roles will be eliminated. The company plans to finalize those decisions by mid to late April and notify those who will be laid off.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
An orca whale calf that has been stranded in a B.C. lagoon for weeks after her pregnant mother died swam out on her own early Friday morning.
Donald Trump's defence team attacked the credibility Friday of the prosecution's first witness in his hush money case, seeking to discredit testimony detailing a scheme between Trump and a tabloid to bury negative stories to protect the Republican's 2016 presidential campaign.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
An Ontario man who took out a loan to pay for auto repairs said his car was repossessed after he missed two payments.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
The Canadian Transportation Agency has hit a record high of more than 71,000 complaints in a backlog. The quasi-judicial regulator and tribunal tasked with settling disputes between customers and the airlines says the backlog is growing because the number of incoming complaints keeps increasing.
An American Airlines flight attendant was indicted Thursday after authorities said he tried to secretly record video of a 14-year-old girl using an airplane bathroom last September.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.