Amazon bid shows how far we’ve come

City’s application to play host to world’s largest online retailer displays astonishing confidence

Toronto is growing up, I think.

We are showing signs of maturity, displaying evidence that teenage angst is being replaced by young adult self-confidence and assurance.

Take, for instance, the region’s response to e-commerce giant Amazon and the company’s ballsy, deliberate public play designed to pillage a willing “partner” of a city for massive tax breaks and incentives.

Everyone knows cities are hungry for new business. Say the word jobs or economic development and mayors fall over each other, city councillors lose their minds and city staff forget basic common sense in pursuit of the next Fortune 500 firm.

Never mind that the rapacious companies more often than not are primed to extract as much out of a city as possible while giving as little as possible, every city thinks it will be the one to hit the jackpot and at least come out even in the exchange.

Amazon let it be known that it intends to expand its Seattle operations to a second North America location in an enterprise the company says is worth up to $5 billion and 50,000 high-paying jobs to the lucky city that finds Amazon’s favour. When fully built out, of course. Some time, maybe, in the future.

Predictably, North America went agog. Any city with ambition had to apply to play host to the world’s largest online retailer. Toronto was among 238 city and city states and regions which submitted a bid at the deadline.

What is heartening is Toronto’s composed, poised, level-headed and unruffled response, bordering on nervy, if not cocky. Unflappable, not cocksure. Composed minus the arrogance.

The team of private sector and government officials that put together the bid had this astonishing attitude when asked how Toronto would compete with the likes of New Jersey, purported to be offering $7 billion in tax breaks and incentives:

“We don’t need to buy Amazon to come here. We have the competitiveness and the best talent base anywhere in North America today. That’s what’s going to draw companies like Amazon here.”

Say, what? Remember when Toronto was traipsing all over the world begging the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Expo poohbahs to please bring their circus to our fair city. Now, this?

With such a transformation, if the International Olympic Committee offers to hold the Summer Olympics in Hogtown, Toronto might coolly tell the buggers that, “really, all things considered, we’d be doing you a favour to allow you to lease our facilities for a few weeks. It might be, ah, indelicate to say it, but, considering what we have to offer, you need us. So, think about it.” We’ve come a long way. Back in 1990, I sat in a room in Paris as representatives from the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) chose Hanover, Germany, over Toronto to host the 2000 World’s Fair. It was a grotesque choice, a self-embarrassment from which the BIE has never recovered. Expos are passe now. They may have been past their time in 2000, but where Toronto might have forestalled the franchise’s demise, the Hanover Fair did much to hasten it.

To sit and watch the spectacle unfold — the rejection of excellence and brilliance and future thought over Old World back-scratching was to be distressed over Toronto’s utter lack of power and clout and stature.

Earlier, Atlanta won the 1996 Olympics, parlaying American power and Coca-Cola influence to sideline Toronto again. That Olympics is considered among the worst in modern history, but crying over the result is for losers.

Toronto would try again, for the 2008 Games. And fail again.

By now the message has seeped into our consciousness. In the world of the Big Boys and Girls, we are not a major player. We are a beta city, maybe beta+ but not the alpha dog.

Since those failures — the bowing and scraping before the corrupt gatekeepers to the overblown international spectacles — Toronto has continued its ascent. Not long ago one would have to read the city’s 190-page Amazon’s bid to recall how terrific this urban region is. Now, the pages serve as a reinforcement because rarely do months go by without some international index declaring Toronto among the world’s first or best or among the top-tier cities for livability, safety, diversity, economic prosperity and competitiveness.

Even when we consider ourselves wallowing in mediocrity — as with our beloved and frustrating TTC, outsiders declare us the best in North America.

So, if Amazon is serious about selecting the best place to grow its company and access the best talent in a progressive, diverse city that’s the modern day gateway to world talent and thought, the tech giant will add its orange to Toronto’s palette. After all, Toronto was just named the world’s fastest-growing tech market and is now the thirdlargest in North America. And last year alone, Toronto added 22,500 new tech jobs, twice as many as New York City.

There is enough skepticism surrounding Amazon’s intent. Few believe the firm would take 50,000 jobs out of Trumpworld without incurring scorn and sanctions, real or imagined. So this is just Amazon using a technique mastered by any home seller in the Toronto region: list low and generate a bidding war.

What’s heartening are the signs that Toronto is secure and confident enough to sell itself, not sell out its citizens

For once, knowing its value, Toronto is taking the long view.

Officials claim Amazon can save $1.5 billion in salaries alone by coming here. (Apparently, a software programmer here costs one-third what she does in New York City.) Our immigration policy builds doors where our neighbour builds walls. And universal health care, abhorred there, is an afterthought here — a fact worth hundreds of millions of dollars and a counterpunch to tax incentives.

The details are there for the number-crunchers — if this is a real competition.

What’s heartening are the signs that Toronto is secure and confident enough to sell itself, not sell out its citizens.

This is summed up in three beautiful phrases in the bid’s covering letter: We are future-proofed. People want to live here. We are now and tomorrow. Royson James’ column appears weekly. rjames@thestar.ca