The City of Cambridge wants the province to expediate its proposed Data Centre Playbook, which is meant to give municipalities a better understanding of what they can expect when it comes to the controversial facilities. At a city council meeting on Tuesday night, Cambridge Mayor Jan Liggett put forward a motion calling on Premier Doug Ford’s government to “expedite the completion and implementation of its Data Centre Playbook and associated approval framework.” The motion also asked city staff to look for appropriate locations and policy consideration for any future data centres. “I want to take it to the province so they can look at their playbook – what sort of tools that we can have in order to collect money, not development charges, but charges that could have a different name that we can utilize for things like that,” Liggett said, while explaining the impetus for her motion. “So many municipalities in North America and around the world are getting caught because we don’t have any guidelines in place, there’s nothing out there to protect the residents,” the mayor explained. “One of my big concerns, when we hear that there’s jobs provided, those are temporary jobs. The construction jobs come and go. They move on from one community to the next, they’re not permanent jobs. The jobs that are provided within these buildings, there are few of them, but there is a spin-off effect that happens, and that’s the same with any industry.” Liggett worried that because data centres don’t typically require a large number of permanent workers, the city could miss out on community benefits, such as municipal taxes, that would come from attracting a large workforce to the area. The motion passed unanimously. Earlier this month, Ford called data centres the “way of the future” during a stop in Guelph. Several municipalities have been pushing for guardrails to guide how they deal with them. Currently, the proposed provincial framework includes stipulations that would see data centres paying for all the energy they consume to ensure those costs are passed along to taxpayers. Cambridge has been home to a data centre on Vondrau Drive since 2010. Understanding A.I. Before voting on the motion, Councillor Corey Kimpson asked staff to consider putting together a workshop on data centres after the 2026 municipal election. “We’re hearing a lot of hearsay and fodder, so I think it would be something that would be really helpful to whoever is around the table as well as members of the community to learn more about data centres, different types of them, how they work. We know we’re going to be dealing with them in the future and that would certainly be useful information,” Kimpson said. Staff confirmed they were already working on a similar plan to ensure councillors have the most accurate and up-to-date information. The city has also created a new webpage specifically about data centres. Moratorium not considered During the meeting, city staff owned up to a mistake that was published in Tuesday night’s agenda. Staff accidently included wording in an addendum that referenced an interim control bylaw that could have temporarily prohibited “the establishment of major digital infrastructure facilities through Cambridge for up to one year.” Deputy City Clerk Chris Fraresso clarified that section was never meant to be published. He said that portion of the addendum was actually a draft that staff had been working on if that option came up during the conversation about data centres. “I just wanted to be clear, that the additional draft wording was not part of the mayor’s motion and was included in error,” Fraresso said. “It was prepared as a draft working document only based on discussions and things that we were seeing around the province and based on AMO’s guidance and was not intended for publication or consideration of council.” With files from The Canadian Press
