Alberta’s Smith takes questions at less rowdy AI town hall, NDP calls for freeze

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and three of her ministers spent an hour Thursday fielding calls and online questions from concerned residents about artificial intelligence data centres being built in the province.

The virtual town hall was tame compared to the two in-person events held earlier this month, where Technology Minister Nate Glubish was repeatedly hit with criticism, profanity and demands for additional safeguards.

For Thursday’s call, Albertans could either submit questions online or, if they registered in advance, over the phone. Moderator Justin Wright, the province’s primary care minister, said over 12,500 people had tuned in.

Smith’s government has been trying to position Alberta as an ideal destination for data centres, saying they could generate new jobs and billions in royalties and taxes for the province.

The premier has said the town halls are about finding “blind spots” in the government’s regulatory framework.

But, as with the previous events, nobody who spoke Thursday expressed any excitement about having the major computing complexes built in the province in the first place. One caller did say he was excited to be on the call with “the premier and her entourage,” but he didn’t ask a question or mention data centres.

The event started with Smith addressing many of the concerns the government has already heard, including water use, location selection and setbacks, and electricity bill hikes — all issues that callers would bring up.

Water usage was a popular topic, with many callers questioning Smith and her ministers for saying that projects to date — namely the $13-billion campus being proposed by tech giant Meta north of Edmonton — will have limited water use.

The facility is to have a closed-loop cooling system, and both the company and the government have said its annual water use would be equivalent to a golf course.

1:52 Olds residents hope A.I. data centre decision sets precedent for province

One caller, identified as David from Calgary, asked why the province wasn’t also accounting for the water that will be used by the adjacent $4.6 billion natural gas power plant, built solely to power Meta’s facility.

“They’ll be using loads of water. I mean, enormous amounts,” he said.

Get daily National news

Get daily Canada news delivered to your inbox so you'll never miss the day's top stories.

Sign up for daily National newsletter Get Started

By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Smith said his point was well taken, but also said other heavy industries use massive amounts of water. She specifically mentioned a pulp mill in northern Alberta that she recently toured, saying it used seven billion litres of water per year.

“We don’t say that you’re not allowed to use water at all,” she said.

Another caller, Peggy, asked why the government was willing to risk bringing in more heavy water users when parts of the province have seen water restrictions in recent years. “It doesn’t seem like a really smart, long-term idea.”

The issue of jobs also came up when one caller asked whether Albertans would be prioritized.

Smith said that was the goal, adding it was also why the referendum her government has scheduled for Oct. 19 will feature questions about whether Alberta should take more control over immigration and temporary foreign worker rules.

“That’s certainly what I think should be done, and I want to just make sure that Albertans agree with us on that,” the premier said.

Thursday’s event also saw the government poll callers and those online about whether they supported setbacks to protect communities from having data centres built too close to homes.

Proximity to homes is why a provincial regulator rejected a major data centre project last week in the town of Olds, north of Calgary. Smith had said on Wednesday that her government was already considering developing guidance for setbacks.

2:00 AI townhall in Alberta elicits fiery response as province looks to promote data centres

Wright shared that 57 percent of respondents “strongly supported” the measure.

He also conducted another poll at the end of the event, asking those on the call to identify their greatest concern about data centres, with options including electricity affordability, grid reliability, water use, or other. The results weren’t shared before the call ended.

Thursday’s town hall began just hours after the Opposition called for a moratorium on AI data centres until stricter rules are put in place.

NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi told reporters that Smith’s government has rushed ahead and rubber-stamped projects without clear guidelines or by first hearing Albertans’ concerns.

1:53 Alberta NDP calling for a pause in new AI data centres

Projects should go through impact assessments to ensure significant community benefits, permanent jobs, and life-cycle plans for when facilities run their course are in place, he said.

They’re the concerns he said his party heard most when it hosted its own data centre town halls over the summer.

“The UCP failed to create a process that Albertans can have confidence in,” Nenshi said.

He said his party’s proposal would provide certainty for residents and those behind the projects. The rejection of the Olds proposal, which had been turned down once before for other reasons, represents a government failure for not having clear expectations for developers, he added.

“There is no framework in place, and they’re making it up as they go along,” he said.

“Would a company like that want to invest in Alberta again after they were treated this way by the government?”

The province didn’t immediately respond to questions about the NDP’s call for a moratorium on Thursday.

The issue of reclamation did come up during the town hall when a caller asked who would be stuck with the infrastructure should a data centre be abandoned.

Glubish, the technology minister, said it would fall to the province. He said he was confident another company would come in and take the warehouse for “pennies on the dollar.”

He also said an abandoned power plant would be considered a new asset for the province, and that the government would look to keep it running so that power is still fed to the electricity grid.

Smith added that reclamation for data centres was different than wind turbines, which her government requires operators to have clean-up plans for before being built.

“We have a high level of confidence that those (data centre) buildings will be able to be used for something else,” she said.

The government’s fourth and final data centre town hall is scheduled for Sept. 11 in Grande Prairie, though the premier isn’t scheduled to attend.