Front Burner - Canada's data centre boom, and backlash

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

As part of the federal government’s AI strategy, hyperscale data centres are being built across the country with many more projects being proposed. But, communities are pushing back, and it’s capturing the attention of local governments.Projects in Ontario, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan have been the subject of protests and petitions for moratoriums. A recent Angus Reid poll reported that 68 per cent of Canadians object to a data centre being built near them.As Prime Minister Mark Carney pushes an agenda of digital sovereignty and AI expansion, we look at how Canadians are responding to the rapid construction of data centres, and the risks AI poses to the environment and local communities.Paris Marx joins us. He is a tech journalist and the host of the podcast, Tech Won’t Save Us. He’s got a book coming out this October called 'Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech's Data Empires.'For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts 

Hi, Steve Patterson here, host of the debaters, and while I love a funny fight, there's one thing that's not up for debate. The Stratford Festival is world-class theater right here in Canada. Whether you're a fan of Shakespeare, musicals, or classics like Death of a Salesman or Waiting for Godot, there's no better time to experience Canadian talent and no better place to see it than the Stratford Festival. So get your tickets now at straffordfestable.ca and experience world-class performance the whole family can enjoy. You know, we even taped the debaters there once, so I guess we're world-class now. This is a CBC podcast. Hey, everybody, I'm Jamie Poisson.

As part of the federal government's AI strategy, hyperscale data centers are being built across the country, with many more projects being proposed. But a lot of communities are pushing back. Last week, Hamilton, Ontario was at the epicenter of that fight when it almost became the first city in the country to put a moratorium on the construction of any new data centers for a year. And when City Council voted,

against it, people were not happy. Appreciate all the voices of a city of Hamilton residents that have been participating in this for some time now. We now have... They're not alone. A recent Angus Reid poll reported that 68% of Canadians object to a data center being built near them. Paris Marks is a tech journalist and host of the podcast, Tech Won't Save Us. He's got a book coming out in October called Hyperscale, The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech. data empires, and in it, he argues that the generative AI race and the rapid construction of

data centers to power it are pushing our planet past its breaking point. We're going to talk about what the data center boom and the revolt against it looks like here in Canada. Paris, hey, it's great to have you back on Frontburner. Thanks so much for making the time. Absolutely. It's great to join you. Okay. We have talked on the show before about how Canada, much like the U.S. and other parts of the world is seeing this data center boom driven by the rise of AI. But now, thanks to this report that came out from York University, we actually have some concrete numbers. According to York, we have 194 active data centers across Canada, and five of them are what are called hyperscalers, the kind that is large enough to draw enough power to train and deploy AI models.

This is the number that really stood out to me. Ninety-six more hyper-scalers. scalers have been announced or are already under construction. That is a massive increase from five to 96. Talk to me about how much of an undertaking that is and the kind of widespread impact it could have. Yeah, it's really significant, right? And there's a reason that these data centers are increasingly drawing the ire of the public, not just in Canada, but in the United States and other parts of the world as well, because when you build one of these massive data centers near a community, they draw a lot of electricity. In many cases, they draw a lot of water. You know, there can be impacts on the people who live around them when you think about noise, pollution,

and those sorts of things. And that's not even to talk about the climate impact too, right? You know, if you're powering this with fossil fuels, there's going to be a lot more emissions that come of it. And obviously, that is a big conversation in Canada today, as we're seeing more focus on oil extraction and pipelines and those sorts of things. And data centers are very much part of that conversation. Meta just announced that they're building or that they plan to build their largest data center outside of the U.S. in Alberta. It'll cost $13 billion and will be powered by a new natural gas plant that'll produce more electricity than what the city of Edmonton uses. This is one of the largest private sector investments in Canadian history. This is a success that goes beyond low taxes and less red tape.

Alberta is the ideal North American spot for data centers, thanks to affordable electricity, flexible power generation, a cooler climate, a skilled workforce and lots of homegrown expertise in AI. What do you think that announcement tells us about Canada's embrace of large-scale AI projects and where things are kind of headed here? It's really staggering, right, to see the scale of the project that's announced, but also how they're very open about the fact that natural gas is going to be a big part of what is powering this, right? I feel like when we have heard, say, Mark Carney and other members of the government talk about data centers in the past, part of the argument has really been that Canada has a clean electricity grid, so it's okay to be building these data centers. here in Canada. As our industries expand, our economy grows, AI accelerates, electricity demand in Canada is expected to double by 2050. So we will double our grid. That's the headline. Canada will double its electricity generation over the course of the next two decades. But the reality is that many of these projects are being slated for Alberta, where they're actually going to be powered by natural

gas, and that's going to mean a lot more emissions. And so the model that meta is planning for Alberta is very much something that we're seeing in the United States increasingly where gas power plants are being kind of co-located with data centers in order to power them. And the notion that these are all going to be powered by renewables or nuclear energy or something like that is really increasingly something that is not being taken credibly. And gas is a big part of that story. I want to ask you about Alberta specifically, because that your university, report says that of all the proposed and under construction projects, Alberta will be home to 90% of the country's data centers. Why? Why is Alberta specifically such a hot spot for the boom?

So there are a number of reasons, right? And, you know, part of what I've heard is that the land is kind of easy to get there in order to build something like this. The government is also very open to attracting these projects, in part because it is looking for a new market for natural gas, right? obviously it's talking about pipelines to bring oil and gas to the West Coast to get it to new markets and things like that. But if it can find a market within its own province and within Canada, that is also very beneficial. And so that's part of the reason why we're seeing those projects being announced there. But, you know, I'm sure the government is also offering incentives and sweeteners to try to attract the companies to Alberta as well. Whereas, you know, we're seeing protests in different parts of the country.

And to be honest, we're seeing it in Alberta too, just maybe not to the scale that we might see in the future. Let's talk about some of the pushback that we've seen already. As I mentioned in the intro, Hamilton City Council voted against this year-long moratorium on new data centers. Burlington, Mississauga, Vancouver are all voting on similar proposals this month. This is something that people have really been pushing for these moratoriums. Other cities around the world have done at Monterey, California, Dublin, Ireland, New York became the first state to do so. What does a moratorium accomplish? Why do people want them?

Yeah, a moratorium is a pause, right? You know, obviously there's a lot of concern about what these infrastructures mean for communities. The industry really wants to build these out really quickly, get them approved really quickly, get shovels in the ground, excavators going, you know, on a really rapid time scale in order to build these out. And communities are saying, you know, let's be certain that this is something that works for us, right? That there's enough of a benefit to justify the cost to the community that comes along with it. Let's make sure that proper planning rules are in place. This is part of the concern in Hamilton, of course, and also the concern that we see in New York.

But also in some cases, it's to make sure that the grid can actually handle it. In Dublin, for example, that was the concern over there. It was really the energy utility saying we can't connect more of these data centers because it is a threat to the grid itself. We don't have the electricity to power them. More than anything, it's to say, let's make sure we can do this properly, sustainably, in a way that we are kind of collectively okay with. And that means maybe sometimes taking some time to put the regulations in place in order to make sure that can happen. And maybe that means that data centers still get constructed on the other side of that moratorium. Or maybe the determination is, you know, data centers just are not a good fit for our community and they shouldn't be built at all.

I imagine a pushback to the moratorium is that essentially it takes you out of the mix, right? That this is all moving fast and that you could miss this big investment opportunity while you're trying to make these guardrails. You know, Hamilton, for example, has been hit quite hard by the U.S. tariffs on steel, right? And just, like, what do you make of that argument? Yeah, I think it's certainly one that we're seeing. I would question, you know, whether it is an accurate one. Certainly, there are a lot of governments and a lot of councils and communities that want to get on board with the next big thing, right? And that hope that a data center will mean not just kind of the investment in the data center, but more investment to come along with it. The city of Hamilton is in a

serious economic decline. We have steel companies that are literally on life support. I can't be a counselor that says, you know what, to hell with $2 billion worth of new investment in the city of Hamilton, because we want to ask for an interim control bylaw that's going to bring us right back to where we are today. You know, if we think about these hyperscale data centers, there are a lot of jobs in the construction phase, but many fewer, in the operation phase. You don't actually need a lot of people to keep one of these massive data centers running and operating. And then the other question is tax revenue, right? How much tax revenue are you actually going to get from one of these data centers to justify, you know, again, the cost that

comes with it, but the potential impacts on the community? One of the things that we've seen in the United States, for example, is poorer communities are more likely to allow them to be built there because they're more desperate for the tax revenue. And so you can see the company is kind of taking advantage of that. Hi, Steve Patterson here, host of the debaters, and while I love a funny fight, there's one thing that's not up for debate. The Stratford Festival is world-class theater right here in Canada. Whether you're a fan of Shakespeare, musicals, or classics like Death of a Salesman or Waiting for Godot, there's no better time to experience Canadian talent and no better place to see it than the Stratford Festival.

So get your tickets now at Stratfordfestable.ca and experience world-class performance the whole family can enjoy. You know, we even tape the debaters there once, so I guess we're world class now. The news can be hard to keep up with, but sometimes I want to spend a bit more time with a story that's made headlines. That's why I produce CBC's Understood podcast. We've covered the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, the scandals surrounding Canada's very own porn hub, the controversial leader of India. Each season of Understood is a short, four-episode immersive experience with a host who knows the story best. Follow so you never miss a season. Let me put another counter argument to you. Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horvath voted against the moratorium on data centers there. And her argument was that data centers here in Canada would enable Canadian institutions to stop buying compute from American companies. This is the sovereignty argument.

And it is based on the need for our universities and colleges and other researchers and innovators in the not-for-profit space, particularly. to be able to have computing capacity for research to be undertaken without having to buy it from the big, bad US providers that they are currently now buying it from. How would you respond to that argument? Yeah, there is definitely something to it, right? You know, if we're thinking about a metadata center, I'm not sure that's really making much of a difference there, right?

You know, we're making this sacrifice, putting all this electricity in for a company like meta. In the case of Hamilton, even if it's a Canadian company that's building the data center, the question is like, what is the cost? And how much computation do we actually need for the types of things that we want to do in Canada? And are we trying to replicate exactly what, you know, say the U.S. tech companies are doing? Or in trying to be more sovereign, less dependent on U.S. tech companies, are we also thinking that maybe there's a different way for us to approach technology in Canada that provides more of a public benefit? And maybe that means, you know, we're not so reliant on these generative AI tools where I would say the verdict is still out as to whether they're really worth the cost that comes with building them and paying for them and all these sorts of things. As we see more reports on the questionable return on investment that companies are having as companies are now pulling back on their AI spending. And plus we see these reports about the impacts on society more broadly, right? Effects on critical thinking people's mental

health when it comes to dependence on these chatbots, not to mention the effect on the information environment when you have so much kind of false information, AI generated information that is flooding social media platforms and things like that. So I think we've still yet to see whether the generative AI moment makes sense, then connected to that, whether it makes sense for us to really be putting all of our eggs in the basket of building out these massive data centers. If, you know, a few years down the line, maybe they're not going to be as useful as we hoped at the moment when everyone was excited about generative AI. You know, in the intro, we heard sort of how angry people were at the council vote, right?

1,68 people submitted comments to the city on this issue. And that, like, broke a record. Are you surprised by how much people are starting to get galvanized by this issue? Not at all. And, you know, I think it took a little bit of time to come to Canada. Like, we've been seeing this in the United States for a bit longer because they basically just have more data centers down there, right? So more communities have been feeling this earlier. But now that more of these data centers, you know, as you said, 96 being proposed at the moment, it's not a surprise to me that people are concerned about hearing them being located in their own communities if they're not sure what it's going to mean for their access to water supplies.

If it might affect, you know, their electricity prices, if it might mean noise pollution from the air conditioning units running on top of the data centers or light pollution from the big floodlights installed, you know, outside of them. And so there's many reasons, I think, for communities to be concerned about this, especially when we're not sure, you know, whether the big justification is really going to pay off at the end of the day. I just wanted to note, there are other parts of the country that are kind of tapping the brakes a bit more. Manitoba Premier Wab Canoe announced that a data center pitched to go on a patch of farmland just south of Winnipeg would not go ahead. The very limited economic benefits for this project do not outweigh the serious environmental concern. So we've taken a look at this project. We've taken a look at AI more broadly, what's happening across North America.

And these hyperscale data centers don't appear to be in the best interests of Manitobans. This move came after a fair amount of local advocacy. Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston has also said that they are not considering any data center projects right now. There wouldn't be a commitment to a data center unless we could fully supply the energy without any risk to Nova Scotians. It would only be something that could be done safely and that would benefit Nova Scotians. We wouldn't put Nova Scotians grid at risk and we wouldn't put their health at risk. Do you think that these like local movements are proving to be successful?

Like what do you attribute to these different reactions across the country? I think that without the local opposition that we're seeing, we really wouldn't be seeing these responses from the premiers. We wouldn't be seeing the, you know, potential of moratoriums in different communities around the country, you know, it really wouldn't be a conversation. We would just be full steam ahead on, you know, letting these data centers into our communities. You know, obviously the one in Hamilton didn't move forward, but I would not be surprised if in the coming months we start to see more communities looking at this and other ones kind of passing into law. And I would also not be

surprised if we see more opposition in Alberta where so many of these projects are being slated, right? Because there are legitimate reasons for people to be concerned. And at a certain, you know, moment, that means that their politicians are going to have to listen to that. But then, you know, the provinces are, say, closer to the federal government. And part of me wonders, you know, if at a certain moment, the federal government has to respond to this much more than they have, you know, up to this point as well as the opposition grows, you know, as we see in the polling. Hundreds marched from the Vancouver Art Gallery towards City Hall, calling for two planned AI data centers to be stopped. As the size of this rally shows, there are certainly people who care.

Protesters say the public hasn't been given enough information about the environmental impact of the data centers, especially how much water they could use. Let's talk about the federal government because absolutely the federal government is pursuing a strategy right now that is very pro-AI, pro-building data centers. The question isn't whether AI will transform our lives. It will. AI is already changing how we work, how we learn, and how we connect. the question is, will it improve the lives of all Canadians or benefit only a few? And that's why we must take a positive, pragmatic, and prudent approach that builds safe, reliable, and sovereign AI for workers and businesses, for Canada, and for our allies. A couple months ago they announced in Vancouver,

these AI factory projects would be coming to the city, and they are actually part of the federal government's enabling large-scale sovereign AI data centers program. Just talk to me a little bit more about how you think the federal government's AI strategy is looking to handle the growing backlash year. I don't think it's really looking to handle it very much, right? I think if you look at the AI strategy and what the federal government is doing, it's very much focused on the adoption of AI, right? trying to push people to use these tools, trying to train them to use these tools, trying to, you know, train young people to go into businesses to get them to adopt generative AI tools, right? You know, this is very much part of the strategy.

Our strategy has three guiding principles. The first is trust. We will protect your data, your privacy, and your children. Second, opportunity. We will empower Canadian workers, Canadian businesses, Canadian students, with the tools to expand their knowledge, their expertise, and their futures. And finally, sovereignty. We will reinforce Canadian sovereignty so Canadians can make their own choices on how AI is built, governed, and used. There's a section of it that is about trust, right, and seeks to address some of the concerns that people have around generative AI specifically. You know, looking at issues like privacy, looking at young people in particular. in the use of their data, looking at deepfakes. And, you know, these are concerns that people have, but I would say they're really the tip of the iceberg of the concerns that people have, right?

The AI strategy is not addressing the concern around data centers. You know, instead, it's very much focused on, you know, building more in Canada, right? And it is also very much advocating that we continue to use, you know, these chatbots and these generative AI tools. For example, when the social media age limits and things like that started to be proposed, it was very explicit that this would not extend to AI chatbots. I think what we see from the government is a real desire to push this, a real alignment with industry and what industry wants. And, you know, I think we're still waiting to see whether they are going to have to respond to that growing opposition that we're seeing from the public where, you know, as you mentioned earlier, 68% of people don't want to see an AI

data center located near their community. And the same percentage of Canadians also want to see heavy regulation of AI, even if that slows its development. You know, you've been talking, throughout about the environmental impacts here, but I do want to drill down on water with you. This Bloomberg report found that two-thirds of AI data centers globally are being built or planned in places with high water stress. Bell is planning to build six AI data centers in BC. Population growth is already straining our water supplies. Those concerns come as Metro Vancouver remains under stage three water restrictions. So much water being wasted, so much power being used. So we can't even water our lawns and they want to use more water.

Talk to me about why we're seeing this kind of industrial scale up in places where water scarcity is already a concern like BC. Yeah, it's a bit surprising on the one hand, right? You would imagine that these companies wouldn't want to do that or would think about where their water is coming from. But what we've seen in the United States is that in many cases, these data centers have been located in places where the companies can get access to cheaper electricity or, say, a cleaner grid.

But the tradeoff there is that those communities, you know, in the south of the the U.S. in particular, have less water to offer, right? And so there's a concern there about the ability to use the water to actually cool the facilities or to get access to it in it not affecting various communities. And we have seen that in different parts of the world, right? And so what we see here in Canada, of course, is a continuation of that. Certainly, companies have been trying to address the concerns by talking about different forms of cooling. But I think that there are still real concerns about what that is going to mean for people's access to water, especially as climate change means that we're going to have more kind of droughts and water shortages into the

future at the same time as we're building these new infrastructures that are demanding so much. Yeah. Just on this cooling stuff, you know, Alberta Premier Daniel Smith spent a day on a call in radio show, kind of reassuring Albertans about this and talking about how the data center that they're planning on building in Alberta, the meta one, is going to use this closed loop cooling system. They are using a closed loop water system. Because that means you withdraw once and then you circulate it. It uses about the same amount of water as a typical golf course. And incidentally, there's 14 golf courses in Surgeon County.

And they also... How do closed-loop systems work? How would you rate them, basically? Are they enough of a solution? Yeah, I would say they definitely reduce water demand, right? There's no question about that. And the thing about these new kind of AI data centers that we're talking about is they run hotter. You know, they use graphics cards instead of the traditional processors and servers that,

a data center would use in the past. And that means that they require water-based cooling, right, in order to properly cool them down. Air conditioners are not enough. And so that's why we're seeing more of a focus on water now in these data centers. You know, in the traditional water-based cooling method, you basically just take in new water as you need it, and as it heats up, it evaporates, and then you lose the water, right? It doesn't go back into the system or anything like that. With closed-loop, you take in an amount of water that you need.

It cycles through the data center. And then as it cycles through, it is kind of re-cooled. so it can keep going through. And certainly you still need to add more water to it occasionally, but it's much less than what you would traditionally need, right, with the other form of cooling. But the other thing to take into account there is that the closed loop system does require more electricity, right?

Because you're cooling that water back down. And of course, creating that electricity also requires water. You know, we tend to forget that piece of it. So there is still a demand there. You know, one of the things that stood out to me, as I was looking into this for the book, was that, you know, in different places around the world, particularly in the southern U.S. and in, say, South America, when they were building out these data centers, they would propose them with kind of the cheapest cooling method for them, which would be this water-based cooling system that is not closed loop. And it was only after opposition that they would switch to something that was, you know, would cost them a bit more money, but would have less of a demand on the community. I think it is notable that the companies now are proposing the closed loop right from the beginning because they can see how the public is already concerned about this. But that doesn't mean that the concern fully goes away.

You talk there about the increased need for electricity. I mean, I know I've seen in the United States lots of examples of people's utility bills going through the roof. And I just wonder if you could talk to me a little bit more about that. I mean, Daniel Smith is trying to assure people in Alberta that that won't be the case. But, you know, what do you think about that? I think that's really hard to believe, to be quite honest, because we know that the metadata center in particular is planning to build this natural gas power plant, you know, to help power the data center. But for the few years leading up to that, it is still going to be dependent on the grid in Alberta. And of course,

they are planning all these additional data centers there as well. What we see in the United States is that the power prices have gone up because the demand has just really outstripped supply, right? And so you have all of these utilities trying to get power, but also having to build out the infrastructure in order to supply that power. And that costs something. And, you know, the rate payers have been made to pick up that cost, essentially. We are seeing efforts in the United States now to make sure more of that cost is being shouldered by the data center companies because bills have gone up so much and because people are so angry. But, you know, we've already seen suggestions. There was a report recently in the National Observer looking at, you know, a claim made by capital

power, power generator in Alberta, you know, suggesting that power prices were going to increase in Alberta because of this data center push. So, you know, directly contradicting what the premier has been saying, you know, industry is expecting power prices to go up. So why would we not trust, you know, what they are expecting and what they are basing their businesses on? And so I think that, you know, residents of Alberta should be rather concerned about what this plan is going to mean for them, what it's going to mean for their electricity prices and really what they're going to be paying going forward, not just, you know, to power these data centers to build out the infrastructure, but the other costs that are going to come along with building so many throughout their province.

Speaking of cautionary tales from the United States, I do want to ask you about what's playing out in Memphis right now between Elon Musk's X-A-I and a local predominantly black community there represented by the NAACP in a lawsuit who say that unpermitted methane gas turbines powering XAI's massive colossus data centers are polluting their neighborhoods. The U.S. Department of Justice is backing Elon Musk and his company, and they're looking to have. have this lawsuit dismissed. And, you know, this might be a more extreme example, but considering the amount of support that tech giants are getting from the federal government and, and provinces like Alberta to build data centers coupled with the kind of power and resources that we see this industry already has, like, do you worry that the kind of local grassroots, people power movements that we've seen so far won't be a match for these forces pushing for this boom? You know, I think challenging anything like this is always difficult, right? And that,

you know, individual communities, individual groups who are pushing back against these things are always going to face, you know, really powerful opposition, especially when we look at some of the most powerful companies on the planet, like meta, who are building out these data centers. But I really don't think that's not a reason to do it, right? Because, you know, if the opposition is not coming from these communities and hopefully these communities kind of banding together to create something more across the country to advocate against this, then who else is really going to do it at the end of the day, right? You know, that opposition, I think, is essential to really get the conversation started. And I would argue that without that, you know, without those local

movements, we wouldn't see Hamilton considering a moratorium. We wouldn't see other parts of the country questioning whether data centers are right for their communities. We wouldn't see the premiers of Nova Scotia or Manitoba questioning data centers in their provinces. right? And so I think in just a short period of time, actually, there has been a lot of progress that has been made by local people pushing against data centers plan for their different parts of the country. And I think that in the months to come, if that keeps up, then that pressure could be felt higher and higher, you know, into the halls of power, into the federal government as well, because at some point they will have to respond, you know, if the public is angry enough

about this. Paris, this is great. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Great to speak with you. All right, that is all for this week. Front burner was produced this week by Joythe Schengupta, Matthew Amha, Kevin Sexton, Sam McNulty, Dave Modi, and McKenzie Cameron. Our YouTube producer is John Lee. Our music is by Joseph Shabbison. Our senior producers are Elaine Chow and Imogen Burchard. Our executive producer is Nick McKay Blokos.

And I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening and talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to CBC.com. slash podcasts.