{"id":"2026-08-21-canadian-affairs-op-ed-ai-data-centres-face-waves-of-municipa","kind":"oped","date":"2026-08-21","title":"Op-Ed: AI data centres face waves of municipal resistance — for good reason","outlet":"Canadian Affairs","medium":"Op-ed","howFeatured":"Nick Tsergas; Dan Shannon","canonicalUrl":"https://www.canadianaffairs.news/2026/08/21/op-ed-ai-data-centres-face-waves-of-municipal-resistance-for-good-reason/","verification":"Verified","notes":"","text":{"status":"fetched","excerpt":"Op-Ed: AI data centres face waves of municipal resistance — for good reason - Canadian Affairs Close About Newsletters Subscribe Sign In Search for: Search Politics & Policy Commentary Community Crosswords Development Aid Energy & Environment Family Health Professional Religion Security Close Politics & Policy Commentary Community Crosswords Development Aid Energy & Environment Family Health Professional Religion Security Skip to content Canadian Affairs Fearless and independent Canadian journalism…","bodyPlain":"Op-Ed: AI data centres face waves of municipal resistance — for good reason - Canadian Affairs Close About Newsletters Subscribe Sign In Search for: Search Politics & Policy Commentary Community Crosswords Development Aid Energy & Environment Family Health Professional Religion Security Close Politics & Policy Commentary Community Crosswords Development Aid Energy & Environment Family Health Professional Religion Security Skip to content Canadian Affairs Fearless and independent Canadian journalism About Newsletters Subscribe Sign In Open Search Search for: Search Menu Sign In Home » Community » Op-Ed: AI data centres face waves of municipal resistance — for good reason Posted in Community Op-Ed: AI data centres face waves of municipal resistance — for good reason Responsible municipalities are taking the time to develop guardrails before saying ‘yes’ to AI data centres by Nick Tsergas and Dan Shannon August 21, 2026 August 18, 2026 Share this: Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Share on X (Opens in new window) X Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky Share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit Share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email An AI data centre in Cardiff, Wales. | Dreamstime. Read: 3 min Cities and towns are moving to regulate AI data centres in a national wave of policy contagion. After a series of decisive votes, Hamilton was poised last month to become the first city in Canada to place a moratorium on AI data centres.  But after immense pressure from data centre proponents, nine Hamilton councillors that had previously favoured a moratorium reversed course and rejected a pause.  This was done in the face of widespread public opposition to a new centre and a looming election. A rare political event, to be sure.  In the days since, Mississauga, Saskatoon, Oakville and many other places have made similar efforts to regulate or limit data centres. These efforts are laudable and demonstrate standards of good governance that residents of Hamilton were owed as well.  The playbook of AI data centre proponents follows the familiar pattern of any good high-pressure sales pitch: make a lot of claims that municipalities are under-equipped to verify, while instilling a sense of urgency around the project. Some local governments are catching on to these tactics. By pressing pause on these developments, they are giving themselves breathing room to write rules informed by careful, fact-based analysis.  This is necessary.  Most zoning bylaws were developed years before AI data centres began showing up on planning departments’ doorsteps.  AI data centres also consume exponentially more power than the largest legacy facilities. In Alberta, Kevin O’Leary has proposed “Wonder Valley,” a 7.5GW data centre near Grande Prairie.  “Smaller” AI data centres range from 20 -30MW. Even at this size, these centres can have major environmental impacts and require new cooling strategies.  Closed-loop cooling — where a liquid coolant circulates continuously to absorb heat from servers — is touted as the modern solution. But this claim deserves scrutiny.  According to a Senate of Canada brief , for every gallon of water used to cool U.S. data centres in 2023, 12.4 gallons were used to cool those data centres’ associated power stations. In effect, closed-loop systems may simply shift much of the water use away from the data centres themselves to an associated power plant.  Closed-loop systems’ pipes also circulate refrigerants and proprietary additives that experts say can end up in local watersheds.  In July, a chemical spill was discovered at a data centre in Cambridge, Ont., which uses closed-loop cooling and was a beneficiary of Canada’s Sovereign AI Compute Strategy . The centre’s U.S.-based owner now says the spilled substance was actually a “bacterial bloom.” After investigating the issue, Ontario has not confirmed this claim. Another frequent argument of AI data centre proponents is that Canada needs to act quickly to achieve “digital sovereignty.” This claim also deserves scrutiny.  Digital sovereignty is important, to be clear. Canadians don’t want hostile governments pulling the plug on vital services or accessing our private data. But building our own AI data centres does not address this concern. Under the U.S. CLOUD Act , software companies with operations in the U.S. can be compelled to hand over data hosted on servers anywhere in the world.  While some governments, such as France’s, are switching to local software providers to mitigate this concern, there is no discussion of doing anything like this in Canada . In fact, last year, Canada signed contracts with the controversial U.S. military-AI firm Palantir.  Responsible municipalities rightly see a greater risk in failing to exercise due diligence than in “missing out” on projects supposedly too urgent to be properly regulated.  These municipalities understand that proposals require careful study by policymakers, lawyers and an array of experts, who together can determine what the appropriate guardrails should be.  This week, Ontario announced Ontario’s Data Centre Playbook , which acknowledges the need to regulate AI data centres in the face of concerns around negative impacts and unevenly distributed economic benefits. This is an important first step, but the framework is still in development and nothing in it is binding. The province doesn’t yet have the answers and nor do we — which is the point. That’s why calls for a moratorium are reasonable.  Provinces and municipalities that take the time to develop guardrails will be more likely to achieve public buy-in and mitigate negative impacts. Those that don’t will, unfortunately, become the likely targets of developers who get turned away elsewhere. Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Share on X (Opens in new window) X Share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit Share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp Share on Mail (Opens in new window) Mail Related Posts Latest Posts ‘One major flaw’: Experts size up government’s $29B homelessness plan All departing U.S. flights grounded due to communication problem Political fallout widens in Nvidia spy scandal Dan Shannon Dan Shannon is an artist and independent investigative journalist based in Hamilton. More by Dan Shannon Leave a comment This space exists to enable readers to engage with each other and Canadian Affairs staff. Please keep your comments respectful. 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