QUEBEC'S TFI TO BUY UPS TRUCKING UNIT FOR US$800 MILLION; SHARES SURGE.

MONTREAL •Quebeciscreating an online marketplace for homegrown retailers that will offer an alternative to Amazon.com and other foreign e-commerce giants, starting this fall.

The transactional website will build on the foundations of the Panier Bleu, a retailer directory the provincial government set up in April. Mouvement Desjardins, National Bank of Canada and the Panier Bleu itself are investing $300,000 apiece, Panier Bleu chief executive Alain Dumas said Monday.

“This is not really about creating an Amazon. What we are proposing is an alternative for people who want to encourage Quebec merchants,” Dumas said. “We want to pool the strengths of our retailers. I don't want to use the term `virtual mall,' but it would be a way to create a destination, a unique multi-merchant basket.”

Quebec established the Panier Bleu — French for “blue basket” — in April as a means of showcasing provincially owned merchants and bolstering retail sales during the first COVID-19 lockdown. A new product catalogue — essentially a search engine that allows consumers to browse through more than 2,500 retailer databases — was added in October.

Building a Quebec-centric website that allows e-commerce transactions is one of 49 recommendations in a 237-page “roadmap” on the future of retail in the province. The report follows consultations with industry experts and retailers, and was made public by Panier Bleu officials Monday. Retail sales in Quebec last year were more than $131 billion, split among about 55,000 merchants, said Economy and Innovation Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon. Some 450,000 people work in the industry.

Online sales have been booming since the start of the pandemic. Retail e-commerce sales more than doubled from February to May, reaching a record $3.9 billion, Statistics Canada reported last July.

COVID-19 has also highlighted a growing consumer appetite for locally made goods. Quebec wants to tap into this sentiment by enabling transactions to take place on the Panier Bleu, Fitzgibbon said. “We want to help Quebecers pick local merchants and buy Quebec-made products,” he told reporters.

While Quebec retailers can sell goods that come from anywhere in the world, “it's obvious that in a `buy local' perspective, it's preferable to purchase a foreign-made product at a Quebec retailer than to go through other platforms,” Fitzgibbon said. “This is one of the aspects that we will actively work on.”

All retailers with Quebec ownership or a physical address in the province can be listed on the new transactional site, Dumas said.