Wal-Mart Canada says it's closing all six Sam's Club stores in Southern Ontario in order to focus on expanding its supercentres across the nation.

Stores in Etobicoke, Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Pickering, London and Cambridge will be shut down before the end of March 2009 affecting 1,200 jobs.

The company's vice-president of corporate affairs Andrew Pelletier says Wal-Mart will minimize the job losses by offering employees positions within existing stores.

"We have more than 30 Wal-Mart in the GTA and we're looking to put people in all of those stores," he says.

"In addition to that we will be opening new supercentres later this year -- so for people we don't place immediately -- we're hopeful they'll get jobs in the supercentres."

Pelletier insists the announcement of the closures is actually one of growth with plans to open 26 new supercentres this year, including nine across the GTA.

"It's not really about the recession, because the supercentre growth this year will be an investment by Wal-Mart Canada of more than $400 million in Canadian communities and it's going to generate 5,000 new store jobs as well as 5,000 construction jobs," he says.

The Wal-Mart Supercentres -- a one stop format that includes food and general merchandise -- is extremely popular with customers and we want to focus on that growth, Pelletier says.

The six southern Ontario Sam's Clubs locations are the only ones in Canada and Pelletier admits that stores sales "were not meeting expectations."

"This is such a small piece of our business, so it didn't make sense to be focusing on that as the growth area," Pelletier says.

Meanwhile, it was confirmed on the Dow Jones today that the retailing giant is in talks with Lowes Cos. Inc. to purchase the Sam's Clubs locations in Ontario.

Pelletier says the agreement with Lowe's could also lead to job opportunities for Sam's Club employees.

Sam's Clubs shoppers were required to buy yearly memberships to shop at the centres.

Pelletier says membership refunds will be made available to customers. However, some shoppers may want to keep their memberships to continue shopping at U.S. locations.

The closures are not expected to affect locations south of the border.

Sam's Clubs were opened in Canada in 2003.