Municipalities across Alberta are changing how they review artificial intelligence data centres after residents objected to projects approved with little public notice, according to a BetaKit report published Oct. 2, as the province pursues a target of $100 billion in data centre investment.
In the County of Grande Prairie, near Sexsmith, the county issued a development permit for an AI data centre to an applicant that has not been publicly named. According to BetaKit, the plans call for five buildings measuring 80 by 180 feet and 15 makeup air units, a type of HVAC equipment, each eight by 20 feet. After residents questioned how little information had been shared, the county said future applications of this kind will go before its municipal planning commission. “We recognize that this application has prompted important discussions about transparency, public input and how projects of this type are considered under the current process,” the county said in a statement quoted by BetaKit.
In Edmonton, Calgary-based real estate firm Walton Global Investments has applied to amend planning documents for the Edmonton Energy and Technology Park to make room for a hyperscale-ready data centre campus, BetaKit reported. The changes would redesignate 253 hectares from petrochemical to medium industrial use. The city told the outlet that AI data centres were not contemplated when the park was planned in 2010, but would be permitted as a heavy industrial use within the existing petrochemical precinct. Public feedback on the proposal is open until Oct. 25.
Elsewhere, Red Deer County is holding a public hearing on a second data centre proposal, after approving its first in the Blindman Industrial Park last year, and Canadian company Wave Infra has proposed a $300-million, five-megawatt AI research lab and data centre along the Highway 2 corridor between Calgary and Edmonton, according to BetaKit.
The stakes extend well beyond Alberta. The province has 22 operating data centres and dozens more proposed or in development, and York University research cited by BetaKit puts 90 per cent of Canada’s planned data centre capacity in Alberta. That means local permitting decisions in the province will, in effect, shape where much of Canada’s future AI computing capacity gets built.
The local pushback follows a summer of provincial town halls on the issue. At an Aug. 27 virtual session that drew more than 12,500 participants, Premier Danielle Smith defended the water use of Meta’s proposed $13-billion campus and its adjacent $4.6-billion natural gas power plant, comparing it with a northern Alberta pulp mill that uses seven billion litres a year, CP24 reported. NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi called for a moratorium on AI data centre projects until stricter guidelines are in place, including impact assessments, commitments to permanent jobs and plans for each facility’s full life cycle.
What has changed is where the friction shows up. Debate that played out at provincial town halls is now landing at municipal permit counters and council chambers, where a single bylaw interpretation or redesignation vote can add months to a project timeline. For developers and the AI companies that want Canadian compute capacity, a fragmented municipal process is a new cost to price in. For residents, the Grande Prairie case shows that a project of this scale could be approved before most neighbours knew it existed.
Several questions remain open: who is behind the Grande Prairie project, whether Edmonton council approves the park redesignation, and whether the province moves toward common standards that municipalities could rely on rather than deciding case by case. Canada News Media has previously reported on OpenAI’s interest in Canadian data centres as grid space runs out.
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Sources: via BetaKit; CP24. Featured image: file photo of data centre cooling equipment (Winston Chen/Unsplash), not an Alberta facility.
