Canada's Voluntary Data Centre Rules Are Signed by the Companies Breaking Them

Imagine a detox clinic that stocks a minibar in every room. Or a climate course bankrolled by ExxonMobil. You would probably ask who is actually running the show. That is the same uncomfortable question hanging over Canada's recently unveiled Responsible Data Centre Development Principles, a set of voluntary guidelines endorsed by the very tech giants implicated in violating them.

Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon introduced the principles in September, responding to growing public anger over the disruptive scale of data centre construction across the country. The timing was notable. So was the guest list. Amazon, Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic, the companies leading this massive buildout, signed on almost immediately.

"Data centres must protect ratepayers, respect water and energy resources, and create lasting benefits for the communities that host them," Solomon said at the September launch. "These principles set a clear national standard: If you build in Canada, you must build responsibly and transparently and you must build for Canadians."

That promise did not last long. Barely three weeks after these companies pledged to be "transparent about local impacts," the U.S. House Judiciary Committee opened an investigation into Amazon, Google, and Meta for using non-disclosure agreements to stop state and local officials from telling residents how data centres affect water supplies and electricity rates.

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, the committee's ranking member, wrote to Alphabet, Google's parent company, noting that "Google's own confidentiality agreements have been shown to contain language that explicitly prevents local officials from disclosing 'the terms of any agreement.'" This is not a hypothetical concern. For over a year, Google fought a local Oregon newspaper in court to keep water consumption figures for its Dalles data centre secret, calling the number a trade secret. When courts finally forced disclosure, it turned out Google was using a quarter of the entire city's water supply.

A company willing to litigate for over a year to hide its water use from one small town is now asking Canadians to trust its word on transparency here.

Gag Orders and Gas Plants

The pattern repeats elsewhere. A Meta subsidiary in Louisiana persuaded Republican Gov. Jeff Landry to personally sign an NDA tied to a $50 billion data centre campus. More than 100 Louisiana state employees signed similar gag orders, agreements that appear to bind them even after they leave government. Eric Holl, an adviser to former Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, told the Gulf States Newsroom plainly: "I don't see this being used as anything other than a tool of intimidation and control."

In Wisconsin, citizens had to sue the local utility regulator just to obtain documents showing the projected energy demand of a proposed Meta facility. That basic information, too, had been classified as a trade secret.

Canada is not immune to this dynamic. The principles call for reduced environmental impacts and a priority on "low-emission energy sources." Yet Bell Canada, also a signatory, has proposed a Saskatchewan data centre development that would need as much generating capacity as the entire city of Regina. Roughly 900 megawatts of that power would come from gas generation built behind the fence. Regina's city council debated the project for over seven hours before voting to demand more information on water and electricity impacts. Eighteen thousand residents have signed a petition opposing it.

Beacon Data Centers, another signatory, says it is "proud to stand with governments, municipalities, and industry in supporting them." In Lorneville, New Brunswick, the company is locked in a bitter dispute with residents over plans to fill a local wetland for an industrial park expansion. The project would consume more than 10 percent of provincial energy demand and generate 6.6 percent of provincial emissions, making it one of New Brunswick's largest emitters. Reporting from the Narwhal found that provincial officials were discussing bringing the data centre to the park long before residents were told, and that its details conflicted with the low-impact vision originally sold to the community.

DeSmog has previously documented Alberta's own gas-powered data centre surge, with nearly 21 gigawatts of new gas capacity under enthusiastic consideration by provincial regulators. Alex de Vries at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam called that figure "absurdly high" and estimated it would require roughly 200 billion litres of cooling water annually, based on comparable installations elsewhere. It is hard to see how that scale of water and energy demand would not touch local electricity rates and heating costs.

This is not an accident of poor planning. Internal Privy Council documents obtained by DeSmog from Greenpeace show that senior advisors to Prime Minister Mark Carney have actually touted rising gas demand from data centres as one of the top "public policy benefits to Canada." The gas consumption is not a side effect officials are trying to minimize. It appears to be part of the pitch.

The principles also promise "strategic value to Canada," language that seems to gesture toward data sovereignty. But building facilities owned by Google, Meta, Amazon, or similar firms accomplishes little on that front. Under the CLOUD Act of 2018, the U.S. government can compel American companies to hand over data to regulators regardless of where that data physically sits. Many of these same companies have shown consistent political deference to the Trump administration, from attending his inauguration to funding his campaign to renaming Lake Ontario "Lake America" on Google and Apple Maps at his request.

Why It Matters

Canadians have good reason to worry about what these facilities mean for their water, their electricity bills, and their democracy as AI-driven disinformation spreads. What they need is enforceable regulation with real teeth. What they have instead are vague, voluntary platitudes, endorsed by the same companies whose conduct in the U.S. and Canada already contradicts them. A promise is only as good as the willingness to keep it, and right now, the record suggests otherwise. Ottawa has a credibility problem, and no minibar in the detox clinic is going to fix it.