The Ford government will approve its first swath of new AI data centres “sooner rather than later,” Ontario’s economic development minister says, even as the province faces mounting calls to halt all new construction over environmental and data sovereignty concerns.
In the weeks after the province released its AI data centre playbook, Economic Development Minister Vic Fedeli said the government has been receiving “lots of proposals” for new projects, but wouldn’t offer a timeline for when they’ll be greenlit.
“So we are assessing them at the moment and we’ll be making some decisions in the relatively near future.”
While the Ford government has been eager to support the construction of AI data centres, it’s been facing local pushback after several communities passed measures to halt data centre development over noise, water usage and environmental worries.
Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said he plans to consolidate those concerns into new legislation that would implement a moratorium on AI data centre construction until more stringent guidelines are implemented.
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“We’ve seen people across the province standing up to say no: the government is not listening. They have failed to put proper safeguards in place to ensure that these data centres won’t harm people in communities,” Schreiner said.
Still, the province is framing the need for Canadian-based data centres as an economic issue to protect local data from falling into international hands.
“The reason why we have them is because we need to have a sovereign data source that is made in Canada,” Lecce said. “We do not want to be beholden to the United States where our power, or rather, our private information on people, on technology, on intellectual property could be weaponized against us by the American president.”
Schreiner pushed back on the assertion that housing data centres in Ontario would automatically protect local data.
“We absolutely need AI data sovereignty, but location is not sovereignty. If it’s a Microsoft data center built in Ontario, Microsoft still owns the data subject to U.S. laws,” Schreiner said.
“So we need Canadian-owned data centers.”
Schreiner’s bill would also create an advisory committee made up of experts in AI, digital information, water and land use planning.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles suggested her party was willing to support the Green Party’s bill and pointed to communities like Oakville, Mississauga and Sault Ste. Marie that have all implemented a one-year moratorium on data centre development.
“The government has shown over and over again that they are not listening to people in Ontario. When it comes to AI data centres, what I heard all summer … everybody I spoke to said ‘we need answers, we need clarity,’” Stiles told Global News.
Fedeli offered reassurances that the government has a “do no harm to citizens” approach to data centres but wouldn’t say whether municipalities would have veto powers.
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