A proposed A.I. data centre project in Moose Jaw that faced heavy resident backlash and a pair of major setbacks over the summer seems to have reached its end, with the company behind the project withdrawing its application. According to a Moose Jaw city council meeting agenda for their meeting on Oct. 13, Aztec AI Health Ltd. withdrew its application on Sept. 10, putting the project in potentially permanent limbo. A motion to receive and file the withdrawal notice was accepted by councillors, with administration saying no further action was needed from the city. The proposal: ‘Inviting Moose Jaw to dream with us’ The company had been seeking to redevelop the site of the former Valley View Centre, a group home in Moose Jaw’s Wakamow Valley that closed in 2019. At a launch event in 2025, the data centre proposal was front-and-centre for a ribbon cutting at the Grant Hall Hotel. The Valley View Project was envisioned as eventually becoming a 150-acre ‘AI Health Town’ that would transform the area surrounding Valley View into a cutting-edge complex focused on AI-driven healthcare and smart agriculture. According to Aztec AI Health’s website, aihealthtown.com, the initial proposal for its ‘Wellness Centre’ was for the immediate 25-acre site of the existing Valley View buildings. The Carpere Valley Development Corporation is also named as a Moose Jaw-based proponent of the project. Its CEO, Christian Yuan, said at the announcement that they were “inviting Moose Jaw to dream with us.” “The projected 1,000 jobs and $485 million investment depend on critical enablers like power capacity. We’re here to build partnerships to make it possible,” Yuan said in June 2025. At the time, proponents hoped to break ground in either late 2025 or sometime in 2026. Pushback, politics and power Following the announcement, the quick timeline ran into major setbacks at both the municipal and provincial levels. In June 2026, the City of Moose Jaw’s executive committee opted to send a proposed amendment to the city’s Valley View Concept Plan to include greenhouses and data centres back to the company with a request for more information. One issue councillors pointed to was a concern that additional public consultation could be required, given the sensitivity of the area and the proposed use. The next month, the project ran into contentious opposition from thousands of Moose Jaw residents who signed a petition against the data centre. As councillors predicted, many of the concerns surrounded the centre site’s proximity to the Wakamow Valley, a major green space in Moose Jaw filled with walking paths and an ecological zone. The pushback was further echoed by the Saskatchewan NDP, who joined in calls for the province to pull the plug on the project. Moose Jaw Wakamow MLA Tim McLeod told CTV News at the time that the province was “not seriously considering this particular application.” The provincial government followed up on that comment in August, saying it would not supply electricity to the data centre, effectively killing the proposal in its current form. In a statement to CTV News, the province said they “have already confirmed that the proposed AI data centre is not proceeding. There is no application before government, no approval being considered and therefore no information to provide.” Pressing pause permanently? Facing a lack of the necessary electricity, public backlash and a paused municipal approval, Aztec cited the evolving regulatory framework surrounding data centres as its reason to withdraw its application. In the letter included in Moose Jaw city council’s Oct. 13 agenda, Aztec’s Director James Xu thanked the city for its feedback and review of the application in June. “Since that time, there have been significant development in the policy environment at both the federal and provincial levels,” Xu said, citing Saskatchewan’s Data Centre Framework as one example. “Aztec AI Health Ltd. believes that further research and feasibility analysis should be undertaken before any further decisions are made regarding the future direction of the proposed data centre project,” Xu said. Xu added the company will work to determine if the project remains feasible, and that withdrawing the application to amend the Valley View Concept Plan “does not represent a final determination,” on the potential future of the project. Council documents go on to say the company will also continue to explore and evaluate additional development opportunities within the existing planning framework.
