A small Alberta town has become a flashpoint in Canada's rush to build the data centres that power artificial intelligence, after residents learned of plans for a complex that would dwarf anything the country has seen so far. Olds, a community of around 10,000 people between Red Deer and Calgary, is facing a proposed data centre development that, according to CBC News, would end up being 10 times the size of any other data centre currently operating in Canada.
For many in the town, the sheer scale has been alarming. At a community information session held last month, residents raised concerns about what one described as the massive fallout from emissions, sound and construction that such a project could bring. The worry is not abstract, and some residents say they are already making plans to leave rather than wait to see how it unfolds.
According to the report, a number of people in Olds are preparing to sell or have already listed their homes, and some local businesses are looking to relocate out of town altogether. Compounding the anxiety, many residents say they simply do not have enough information about what is being planned. As one put it, the community does not want to be the test case for a project of this size.
Olds is far from alone. The push reflects a broader transformation in how and where Canada builds data centres, driven by the demands of AI and large-scale cloud computing. What were once anonymous buildings tucked into cities and suburbs near their users are now becoming sprawling developments, with some single sites requiring hundreds of acres of land to accommodate them.
The geography of that build-out is shifting decisively toward Alberta. Lindsay Rollheiser, co-author of a new paper currently under peer review on the status of planned data centres, said the country is seeing a massive shift, with the vast majority of proposed centres heading to the province. Developers are increasingly drawn to places with cheap land and ready access to energy, moving away from the earlier concentration in Ontario, and roughly 90 percent of the build-out is now expected in Alberta.
The numbers underline how fast the sector is growing. Canada currently has five hyperscale data centres, each with power capacities between 50 and 100 megawatts, with two in British Columbia and the others in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. But another 96 have been announced or are under construction, most of them with even higher capacities, including Alberta's first truly hyperscale facility at 90 megawatts, whose first phase is set to go live in the third quarter of this year.
For the AI industry and governments pursuing what they call AI sovereignty, the build-out is a strategic priority. But in places like Olds, it has triggered a made-in-Canada pushback, as communities weigh the promised economic benefits against the environmental and quality-of-life costs. As one expert noted, there is not really a good spot for a data centre, and no matter where the AI-focused ones are placed, the environmental impacts are going to be significant.