The final vestiges of a campaign to attract droves of people and their skills to Alberta had all but disappeared from the UCP government’s agenda. It was December 2024 and Alberta is Calling had, by most accounts, been far too successful for the province’s well-being. Detractors said it had been too much, too fast, without enough planning in place to absorb the onslaught. Some are making similar points about the arrival of data centres to serve a ballooning artificial intelligence sector, heralded by the publication on Dec. 4, 2024, of a government strategy document. The government is “going full tilt” on projects when it should have first spoken to potentially affected communities, NDP Deputy Leader Rakhi Pancholi told reporters at a town hall in St. Albert. And it should have made public an economic plan for acceptance of the massive server farms and their related cooling and other infrastructure, including power plants. “This is not about saying yes or no to big projects,” Pancholi said during the event last month. “It’s about making sure we have the right framework in place so Albertans can be assured that they have a strong plan going forward, and that the things that they care about are also protected.” In the back of her mind, perhaps, was the government’s Alberta is Calling record, when everything from bridges to schools to hospitals strained and sometimes cracked under the weight of hundreds of thousands of new residents. The campaign’s justification? The UCP government of then premier Jason Kenney had sought to resolve acute employment shortages — roughly 100,000 unfilled jobs across key sectors like skilled trades and health care. More people would unlock business capacity and sustain growth, went the thinking, so Alberta touted the lower cost of living here to draw talent from pricier Canadian markets. From warm bodies to server racks But before the last calendar page of 2024 slipped into the wind, the government had already embarked on a new type of attraction initiative. Arriving without a snappy catchphrase, this one took aim at a different audience. This new calling card landed at the feet of Big Tech, under the title Alberta’s AI Data Centre Strategy: Powering the future of artificial intelligence. The strategy’s justification? A value-added resource industry of sorts could take advantage of friendly political, regulatory and cold-weather climates, along with wide open spaces and abundant natural gas, to boost the Alberta economy. Just 11 pages long and heavy on photos and white space, the strategy is unapologetically pro-industry. “Alberta is driven to be North America’s destination of choice for AI-enabled data centre investment,” it enthuses. “With its burgeoning technology industry, abundant resources, competitive tax rates, cold climate and business-friendly regulatory environment, Alberta is ready to lead the way into this next era of technological innovation.” And just like Alberta is Calling before it, the strategy has been massively successful, at least when measured against the response from the sector itself. Within days of publication, celebrity entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary was touting a $70-billion proposal for a site in Greenview municipal district near Grande Prairie. Home for multiple future AI data centres, Wonder Valley — an apparent play on O’Leary’s nickname, Mr. Wonderful, which he first embraced on reality TV — would feature its own natural gas and geothermal power generation, bragged a news release dated Dec. 9, 2024. The hunger for power Today, the total number of proposed so-called campuses for AI data centres is roughly 13. A campus can mean a single major operator, its data centre and its ancillary buildings and other infrastructure, or it can mean an industrial park with space for multiple tenants. Those potential sites represent about 90 per cent of the power draw of all AI data centre proposals in Canada. The future electrical generation needed to run them — about 20 gigawatts — is enough to keep the lights on and the washing machines churning in 15 million to 20 million homes. That’s close to Alberta’s installed capacity of around 23 gigawatts at the end of 2024. And it doubles the usual provincial draw from the grid of around 10 gigawatts at any given moment. Limits on the love Indeed, electrical use and big data’s effect on power bills are among the reasons that, broadly speaking, Albertans have yet to fall in love with AI data centres. A Leger poll of 1,000 Albertans in July found that 42 per cent of respondents want to see a temporary pause placed on new approvals for large AI data centres. Respondents supported an independent public review of the effects on electricity prices, grid reliability, water use and emissions. But 40 per cent of respondents said Alberta should plough onwards. The province should keep approving AI data centres under current rules, preventing jobs and investment from landing elsewhere, they said. For its part, the province says the approval system is patterned so proponents bring their own power. But the NDP notes that projects will likely draw from the grid before everything is at full capacity. As for water use, the province says the latest technology for data centres involves closed-loop systems rather than a constant draw. Nate Glubish, the minister of technology and innovation, compares the systems to a radiator pumping water and antifreeze through your car. The amount of water used for Meta’s centre in Sturgeon County near Edmonton, he says, will be about the same as what’s needed for a golf course. In any case, the company still must follow water licensing requirements. Cooling needs and costs are already lower than they are in many locations because of the colder climate here, he notes. But water and power bills aren’t all that’s on the minds of Albertans. The Opposition NDP and the governing UCP have heard as much while holding virtual and in-person town halls. Among other persistent talking points from attendees are: Too much, too fast — again? In short, there’s an overriding question of readiness and the province’s ability to absorb massive data centres that have proven widely unpopular in the U.S. After all, Alberta has already been down a road that has some surface similarities. The government though of the Alberta is Calling campaign as a way to bring in skilled and ambitious newbie neighbours to drive the economy and meet labour shortages in the pandemic’s aftermath. Growth, tax revenue and good times would follow for all to enjoy. But growth of more than 400,000 people pushed the population to nearly five million and far outstripped infrastructure and services. School enrolments skyrocketed beyond the capacity of staff, bricks and mortar. Rents shot up, too, as Alberta’s available home inventory shrank to historic lows. Within a health-care system already disrupted by an ongoing dismantling and restructuring, hundreds of family doctors stopped accepting new patients. Bridges and roads in municipalities, meanwhile, almost literally buckled beneath the wheels of newcomers. Still scrambling to reset and reinvest, the government let Alberta is Calling quietly die on Dec. 31, 2024, with the end of a moving bonus. The NDP maintained in the aftermath that the governing UCP should have seen the pressure on infrastructure and services coming. This time, the Opposition is making parallel points. Nathan Ip, the shadow minister of technology and innovation, put it this way while speaking to the press in St. Albert: “It’s clear that the Wild West approach the government is taking just isn’t working.” Glubish, for his part, sees things differently, although he acknowledges that Albertans are “asking the right questions.” The minister told The Gazette recently: “It’s been important to me to try and make sure that we validate the concerns that Albertans have, because they are rooted in real-world examples. “But then I highlight for Albertans that we chose not to be first in this industry. We wanted to be the smartest, so we spent two years developing a regulatory framework to protect their interests.” George Lee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Macleod Gazette
