Up on the Toronto City Council agenda are two members motions’ concerning data centre projects in Scarborough and Etobicoke North. Neither motion includes a moratorium on said projects which thousands of residents in Toronto have been asking for amid climate change driven heat-waves and heavy smoke from wildfires in recent weeks.
40 some protesters showed up to City Hall Wednesday, calling on councillors to pause the developments until costs to residents, ecosystems, resources and the climate can be gauged, joining the chorus of Canadians across the country who are pushing back on new power-intensive facilities.
The office of the Federal Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon told Met Radio in a statement that data centres are an important part of the infrastructure supporting Canada’s digital economy and AI ecosystem and should be handled responsibly.
“Municipalities have an important role in determining how proposed developments fit within their communities,” Soloman said. “The questions being raised about electricity, water, land use and local impacts are legitimate.”
Later, Met Radio sat down with Shion Guha, an assistant professor of information and computer science at the University of Toronto, where he directs the human-centered data science lab. He studies how governments use AI to allocate public resources and builds the methods and tools to govern those systems. He told Local Journalist Mia Johnson that municipalities are not well-equipped to handle the AI boom that’s driving a massive wave of large-scale data centre proposals and applications now rippling through Canada.