"Amazon.ca. Same great features. Better country." That, says Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, is the unofficial slogan for the new Canadian version of online retailer Amazon.com that officially launched Tuesday.

The new Canadian site, Amazon.ca, offers Canadian shoppers faster delivery within Canada, lower prices listed in Canadian dollars, and access to a massive stock of 1.5 million titles of books, music and videos.

The site will promote Canadian writers and musicians, with both English and French titles available. Users will be able to place an order in either official language and read original editorial reviews and recommendations in English and French.

Injecting that Canadian flavour into the site is what makes it different, Bezos said.

"All of the products are sourced locally here in Canada, which gives us the Canadian selection which we didn't have before," Bezos told CTV's Canada AM.

Seattle-based Amazon has long attracted attention from Canadian customers. More than one-third of its sales have been to customers outside the United States and Canada has always been the largest export market. But while the retailer already operates websites in the United Kingdom, Japan, France and Germany, it has waited until now to launch in the Canadian market.

Amazon has struck a deal with Canada Post subsidiary company Assured Logistics to handle distribution. A report in The Globe and Mail suggests Amazon might get around foreign ownership restrictions by using Canada Post's Mississauga, Ont. fulfillment centre to ship books from distributors. That has Amazon's Canadian competitors crying foul.

Chapters-Indigo claims the U.S. firm is skirting regulations about foreign ownership of Canadian booksellers, which requires that a bookseller be majority Canadian-owned.

"That's just not so," Bezos said. "If you look at the law, it applies to companies that have a place of business in Canada and have employees in Canada which Amazon.ca does not."

The Canadian Booksellers Association is already calling on Ottawa to review Amazon's entry into Canada. Bezos questions the motive behind the objections.

"The truth is, Indigo-Chapters . . . is using that as sort of a smokescreen. They don't want the competition," Bezos said. "Is Indigo-Chapters really concerned about Canadian cultural products or are they concerned about new competition?"

Amazon said reducing the cross-border distribution costs for customers was their primary motivation.

Regardless, the entry of the American retailer is sure to strike a blow Chapters-Indigo, which has already been struggling. In the year ended March 30, revenue at its online division dropped 32 per cent to $34.7 million and it reported an online operating loss of $1.9 million.

But Amazon has not fared much better. The company didn't report its first quarterly profit until the final three months of 2001, when it earned $5 million US -- a pittance compared with the $2.9 billion US in losses since it went public in 1997. And the bookseller was back in the red in the January-March quarter, when it lost $23 million US.