As concerns over AI data centres spark protests and moratoriums in communities across North America, there’s growing opposition to a pair of the controversial facilities planned in Metro Vancouver. On Thursday, COPE Vancouver became the first party to make AI a major plank of its platform ahead of next month’s municipal election, citing concerns about job losses, noise, water usage and other disruptions. “We (also) need to require privacy safeguards and disclosure of significant AI use, and established consequences for elected officials who break these rules,” said Sean Orr, a sitting Vancouver councillor for COPE. He cited Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim’s public admission that he had nearly a dozen AI agents doing “a lot of” his work—something the mayor later said did not include any city business—as grounds to establish an acceptable use policy. “We weren’t elected to outsource our judgements,” Orr said. COPE candidate Solomon Yi-Kieran went on to call for a moratorium on AI data centres, as other Canadian cities have done. In May, these issues rose to the forefront after Telus announced it would be building three “sustainable, sovereign AI factories” in British Columbia, two of them in Vancouver. The company says it’ll use a “closed loop” water system to cool the machines with significantly lower water consumption than other designs. Nonetheless, with drought conditions persisting in much of the province and water restrictions in place in Metro Vancouver since May, water usage in the profit-driven centres have been a key concern for citizens facing the prospect of the sprawling facilities in their communities. On Thursday, a parliamentary secretary to the environment minister was in the Lower Mainland touting new federal funding to safeguard freshwater systems so CTV News asked whether his government would commit to prioritizing it for human consumption and agricultural use, over data centres. “Date centres and the use of water is municipal,” replied Wade Grant, MP for Vancouver Quadra. When CTV News asked if the federal government could influence municipalities to implement such policies, he said “I absolutely believe we can make sure we work in lockstep with every level of government.” The Mark Carney government is heavily promoting the technology and its potential benefits. Last week, the federal AI minister announced a “framework” to address growing concerns around the centres, including minimizing water usage and addressing the possibility of rising energy costs. But Evan Solomon also acknowledged the 23 companies that have signed on are under no legal obligation to comply and that there’s no enforcement. On Wednesday, he announced $13 million toward AI literacy, acknowledging safety issues and the backlash, going on to suggest there’s no going back. “If we don’t build it here we got to buy it from somewhere else, and if we don’t innovate here we rent it from someone else, and if we don’t make the rules here, we follow someone else’s,” said Solomon.
