Amazon Is Testing Delivery Drones In a Secret Canadian Location

​US regulators have worried that the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) glacial approach to approving commercial drones would result in big business leaving the country, and now it's actually happened: Amazon has shipped up to Canada to test its delivery drone tech.

According to The Guardian, Amazon has been testing drones in the province of British Columbia, in a secret location just 2,000 feet from the US border, for at least a week. The company is testing a fleet of drones that can carry packages weighing up to five pounds, which make up 86 percent of Amazon's business.

While the FAA in the US has approved just 48 requests to tests commercial drones to date, the Canadian government has approved nearly 3,000. It's this fast-acting and laissez-faire approach to drone regulation that is seen by industry observers to be driving drone innovation up north.

"We are very grateful to the FAA for granting us permission to conduct [unmanned aerial system] testing outdoors in the United States," Meisner said at the time. "[However] obtaining permission took far too long, and certainly much longer—over half a year—than it took in other countries."

Amazon executive Paul Meisner told a Senate committee last week, that the FAA took so long to approve a testing permit that the drone in question was already obsolete by the time their request had been granted.

The exact amount of time Amazon has been testing in Canada is unclear, and Amazon has yet to respond to Motherboard's request for comment.

It's possible that Amazon's decision to test its drones in Canada could spur US regulators to open up the country's skies more quickly. However, it could also threaten to deepen the developing divide between commercial drones and hobby drones in the eyes of regulators trying to push forward testing approval.

Appearing alongside Meisner in front of the Senate committee, Senator Cory Booker made a distinction between, basically, "good" commercial drones and annoying/weird/pervy/dangerous hobby drones. The FAA could not be immediately reached for comment.

"We need to distinguish between commercial operations and private use," Booker said. "We have a problem with private use, I was happy to see my colleagues bring up private use, but the commercial usage, that's not an issue. […] We are slowing this country, where innovation is going on in other countries, we are falling behind."

While the path forward for drones in the US remains, as ever, murky, this is a rare instance where Canada is actually ahead of the game compared to our neighbours to the south.