Formerly headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, the subsidiary formed with the acquisition of Zellers store leases from the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in January 2011.

[2] The retail chain racked up losses of $2.1 billion in its lifespan, and was widely viewed as a failure, termed a "spectacular failure" by Amanda Lang of CBC News,[3] "an unmitigated disaster" by Maclean's magazine[4] and "a gold standard case study in what retailers should not do when they enter a new market" by the Financial Post.

[10] INC Group opened a small Target Apparel retail store adjacent to the company's head office in December 2003.

HBC failed to find a buyer for the remaining stores and planned to continue operating Zellers as a smaller chain.

However, the geographical constraints of serving these far-flung Zellers outlets meant that operating them was no longer economically viable, so HBC announced on July 26, 2012, that it would close almost all of these stores.

[50] Supply chain and demand issues also led to situations where some of the early locations were not adequately stocked in certain product categories, resulting in empty shelves.

[51] The supply chain problems were blamed on using a brand new SAP inventory software and not giving sufficient time for staff to work out the system's problems, as the parent company refused to push back the planned launch date as they did not want to keep paying rent on unopened stores.

[39] Target Corporation's expansion into Canada hoped to capitalize on Canadian shoppers who frequently crossed the border for its U.S. stores.

However, this may have backfired as Canadian shoppers felt that Target Canada stores failed to meet the high expectations set by their U.S.

Despite the initial high traffic at Target's new stores, customers were not returning frequently enough to these stores to buy the basic household items, as that market was dominated by entrenched Canadian grocery and drug retail chains such as Loblaws, Shoppers Drug Mart, and Walmart Canada.

[49] Paul Trussell, retailing analyst at Deutsche Bank, suggested that "traffic has slowed below expectations in recent weeks, driven partly by Canadians’ perception that prices are too high, both relative to Walmart Canada and Target's U.S. locations.

[49][57] Subsequent commentators did not blame Fisher, "the odds were stacked against him from the start, given the extremely tight timeline and the thin margin for error.

[39] On January 15, 2015, Target Canada announced that it had commenced Court-supervised restructuring proceedings under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act and that it would close all 133 of its Canadian stores.

Two planned new store openings, one at the Harbour Plaza condo project in the South Core of Downtown Toronto, and the Bayshore Shopping Centre in the west end of Ottawa, were cancelled due to the closure.

[58] Likewise, plans to open a smaller Target store in the former Zellers location in Lawrence Square Shopping Centre (later renamed Lawrence Allen Centre in late 2019) in Toronto similar to the CityTarget format were also cancelled and were replaced with two additional public mall entrances, Marshalls, HomeSense and PetSmart by early 2016 (and Structube a few years later but before the mall's renaming).

[59][60] Target Canada would have been unable to meet its employees' payroll for the week of January 16, 2015, if it had not filed for Court protection from creditors.

[68][69] In October 2015, Target began offering international shipping on goods sold on their online site, which includes Canada.

The Canadian version did not offer free online shipping (as online shopping was unavailable in Canada when Target's Canadian operations were active), a 30-day extended return period, a one-percent donation to K–12 schools on almost all purchases, a Visa credit card or a store-only credit card that are available in the United States.

[120] Robert Motum, a Toronto-based playwright, spent two years interviewing and gathering the stories of former Target Canada employees.

[122] The piece, commissioned by Outside the March Theatre Company, was directed by Mitchell Cushman, and was staged in a site-specific setting inside an empty Target store.