Canada’s artificial intelligence minister says the Liberal government is aware of the risks involved in a major investment in AI data centres in British Columbia, but taking such chances is necessary for the country to remain competitive globally.
Evan Solomon and Vancouver-based telecom giant Telus announced the plans for three B.C. facilities on Monday in what’s described as a bid to boost Canada’s sovereign computing and artificial-intelligence infrastructure.
The two in Vancouver and one in the Interior city of Kamloops represent an attempt to create what Telus calls “one of the world’s most powerful and sustainable AI infrastructure clusters.”
“We shouldn’t sugar-coat it,” Solomon said at a news conference in Vancouver. “Of course, there are financial risks when people are investing billions of dollars.
“Building is a risk, which is why the Prime Minister said we cannot be risk-averse in this moment. We’re going to take on an element of risk, but you also have to do that boldly and responsibly. Risk cannot come at the expense of our values and sustainability.
“In this moment, do we want a country that is not taking risks to bet on Canada? Do we want a country that’s not taking a risk to bet our own innovation, our own energy systems, our own cities, our workforce? Absolutely not.”
No costings for the project have been released. However, the federal government has committed $2 billion over five years, starting in 2024_25, under an initiative to identify and boost large-scale sovereign data centres.
Telus said the project would see the expansion of its existing Kamloops data centre, as well as the development of two new Vancouver facilities in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood and in the city’s downtown.
The Kamloops expansion and the Mount Pleasant facility will open later this year, while the downtown facility will come online in 2029.
Outgoing Telus chief executive Darren Entwistle, who is retiring at the end of June after 26 years in the post, called the project a “seminal announcement” for Canada’s economic future and added he “cannot wait to cheer this one on _ even if it’s from the sidelines.”
“To do a comparative to understand the magnitude of what is being achieved here, this is enough processing power to run the world’s most advanced AI models,” Entwistle said.
“And every single computation will happen right here on Canadian soil, with infrastructure that is owned and infrastructure that is controlled by Canadians.”
The project announcement comes after a call for proposals by the federal government on large-scale AI clusters ran from Jan. 15 to Feb. 15 earlier this year.
In a statement, federal Conservative shadow AI minister Ben Lobb called the announcement “photo ops” unnecessary for driving tech development in Canada.
“Canada should already be a hub for AI data centres,” Lobb said. “They don’t need government involvement or tax dollars; they just need the Liberal government to get out of the way.
“The Liberal government has not repealed their anti-development laws, regulations, and taxes that block projects. They should scrap them and get out of the way so we can use the advantages we have to build our future.”
The federal government said the project would support domestic innovation involving both academia and industry.
Telus said the three new data centres would get more than 98 per cent of their electricity from renewable sources, and waste heat from the two Vancouver facilities would be used to help heat homes.
Artificial intelligence has been under federal scrutiny in recent months, after February’s mass shootings in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., where shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar had troubling interactions with the ChatGPT chatbot that were flagged by OpenAI _ but not forwarded to police.
Solomon said Monday that he would not “relate that to what we’re doing here,” while adding that an examination of AI safety protocols was ongoing and “all options are on the table.”
But he said Canada could shy away from AI, and building Canadian data centres was part of an overall modernization process and not an attempt to close off the country from tech from other countries.
“We are building sovereign AI under Canadian law, but we are still going to have Canadians use technologies from around the world, including things like ChatGPT,” Solomon said.
“We can’t stop people. We don’t want to. Sovereignty is not solitude, but we have an obligation to protect Canadians, to protect children, and that means making sure it’s safe, reliable, transparent, and subject to Canadian law as we’ve talked about.”