Quebecor to merge Canoe and Sun Media

Quebecor Media has announced plans to merge its Canoe online operations into the Sun Media newspaper publishing unit.

The new company will be headed by Pierre Karl Péladeau, CEO of Quebecor Media and a new management team will be put in place.

Bruno Leclaire, the president and CEO of Canoe, will be stepping down, taking “a well-earned break for a few months” but the company said he may return in a different capacity.

Péladeau said in a news release:

“Our business environment changes constantly and quickly. The current reality dictates that we must always be reinventing ourselves, and that’s exactly what we’re doing today. The integration of Canoe into Sun Media will optimize the strategic alignment and efficiency of the operations by providing strong, unified leadership and will accelerate our multimedia evolution, in particular by eliminating organizational silos that have become obsolete in the multi-platform era.”

According to the release, the Canoe portal, along with its offshoots (jobboom.com, autonet.ca etc.) will remain intact and the Canoe team will continue to work on the online initiatives of other Quebecor subsidiaries.

No layoffs have been announced in relation to this merger.