The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday edition that Amazon is continuing its push into Canada by beefing up hiring and expanding its data centre business north of the border. A Bloomberg dispatch to The Globe says that the Internet giant will add 200 people to its Toronto office to work on sales and technology, taking total head count to 800 in the city and 2,000 including warehouse staff across Ontario. It also set up local data centres in December for customers who do not want their information stored on U.S. servers. Amazon and rival Alphabet Inc. have stepped up competition in Canadian cloud services as privacy and security concerns increase demand for local servers. Cloud accounted for most of Amazon's operating income last year; Amazon Web Services' sales increased 55 per cent in 2016, while profit more than doubled. The push is just one part of Amazon's expansion into Canada. In December, it introduced its Prime video streaming service, adding another major player in a market that Netflix has been defending from domestic players like BCE and Rogers Communications. Bloomberg notes that Rogers shut down its Shomi streaming service last September, just months before Amazon Prime arrived.