Yesterday’s launch of The Huffington Post Canada marked the first international version of the site, which was purchased by AOL late last year.

Arianna Huffington told the industry crowd at yesterday’s AOL Roundtable that the launch date AOL Canada general manager Graham Moysey and his team originally came to The Huffington Post with was much more ambitious.

“The activation team originally wanted HuffPost Canada in four to five days,” she said.

Though it’s a smaller market than the US, Moysey said there is still a $3 billion advertising market in Canada, and The Huffington Post Canada wants a piece of that pie.

Huffington was quick to add that she thinks the launch of The Huffington Post Canada will add to traffic for other news sites in the country, because of the brand’s propensity to link to other sources.

“I think many brands waste too much time on thinking about competition and what the other brands are doing,” she said. “They need to focus on being better themselves. We are not all going after the same pie.”

MiC caught up with Arianna Huffington to talk about online publishing, and the one thing businesses need to know about The Huffington Post.