Hundreds of Vancouver residents took to the streets Saturday to push back against two planned Telus AI data centres in the city, according to CBC News.
The march started at Waterfront Station and wound through to Granville Island, with demonstrators voicing concerns about how much water and electricity facilities like these actually consume, especially as Metro Vancouver sits under Stage 2 water restrictions with Stage 3 likely coming in June.
Protest organizer Torin LaRocque didn’t mince words. “We should just not have any data centres in Canada, period,” he told CBC News. “Instead of focusing on these giant corporations, our government should be focusing on its citizens.”
The two facilities in question are Telus projects backed by Ottawa’s sovereign AI infrastructure initiative. One is going into the former Hootsuite building in Mount Pleasant and is set to open later this year. The second, near B.C. Place, is slated for 2029. Both the City of Vancouver and the B.C. government have thrown their support behind the builds, with Mayor Ken Sim calling them world-class facilities.
Telus says the centres will run on 98 per cent clean hydro power and use 90 per cent less water than a conventional data centre. The company also claims recycled waste energy from the sites could heat around 150,000 homes.
But B.C. Green Party leader Emily Lowan, who attended the rally, told CBC News the whole thing feels like politicians “blindly chasing the AI bubble” and argued the land could be better used for housing. One of the data centres will be in the heart of downtown Vancouver.
Metro Vancouver’s water services director Linda Parkinson told the CBC there’s currently no specific regional policy covering data centres, and that any large water user would face scrutiny over whether it recycles water rather than drawing heavily from the regional supply.
Want to see more of our stories on Google?
P.S. Want to keep this site truly independent? Support us by buying us a beer, treating us to a coffee, or shopping through Amazon here. Links in this post are affiliate links, so we earn a tiny commission at no charge to you. Thanks for supporting independent Canadian media!
I may be asking the wrong question question here, but why can’t they build it near the port and use ocean water to cool down? Why does it have to be fresh water?
And here is the lefts new hill to die on…..