By Armaan Khanna, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Lakeside Leader
The loud political fights over this fall’s separation vote might be taking over conversations across the province, but a different economic giant is quietly arriving in Northern Alberta. A new “gold rush” of artificial intelligence (AI) data centres is about to rapidly change the province’s economy and environment.
During an exclusive interview with the Lakeside Leader in Slave Lake this week, Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi warned that these huge tech projects are flying under the radar. He argues they threaten to drive up utility bills and drain natural resources, all without creating the long-term jobs Northern communities actually need.
“Artificial intelligence has changed the nature of everything, and particularly the nature of jobs and the nature of work,” Nenshi says.
The provincial government has heavily chased the multi-billion-dollar AI sector. They are selling Alberta as a top global spot because of our cool climate and huge supply of natural gas. But Nenshi argues the economic payoff for everyday residents is not what it seems.
“The challenge with these data centres is they only create construction jobs,” Nenshi says. “It only takes 10, 20, 30 people to run an AI data centre. A bunch of those jobs are security guards at lower levels, IT staff. There are not huge numbers of high-paid jobs.”
Beyond the lack of permanent jobs, the physical toll these buildings take on the provincial power grid is massive. Some planned mega-campuses need enough electricity and water to supply entire cities.
“The power needs of these things are enormous,” Nenshi says. “Alberta is well placed in some ways to build that power because we have a lot of natural gas. But that also means that the price of natural gas will go up, and people’s utility bills will go up. So we have to look at all of the implications of these things.”
At first, Nenshi stated that these buildings must pass strict environmental reviews to fully understand their impact. However, the Lakeside Leader pointed out that several huge AI projects have already successfully skipped these provincial reviews. This includes a controversial mega-campus planned near Grande Prairie, backed by celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary. Hearing this, Nenshi shifted his tone to directly criticize the skipped rules.
“There’s been two or three of them that have been exempted from provincial environmental assessment,” Nenshi says, adjusting his earlier stance to address the facts. “They don’t have a small footprint. So there at least has to be some analysis done on them, in my opinion.”
He warns that Alberta cannot simply favor these developments over all other industries just to chase tech headlines. He says, “we certainly don’t want taxpayers holding the bill for any failed projects” when the first wave of excitement slows down.
While data centres dominate the talk about the future economy, traditional Northern industries are facing a different, immediate crisis: they cannot find enough people to work.
Nenshi knows that immigration rules and the temporary foreign worker program are complicated and heavily debated. He notes that after the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government “really made a mistake” and “took their eye off the ball.” This led to two years of huge population growth in Alberta.
According to Nenshi, Premier Danielle Smith used this sudden population boom to distract from her own government’s mistakes.
“This allowed the Premier basically to blame everything on immigrants,” Nenshi says. “Healthcare is not working, it’s immigrants’ fault. Education’s not working, it’s immigrants’ fault. And this is a way for her to avoid having to take responsibility or accountability for the whole government’s mistakes.”
However, Nenshi points out that population growth has since “absolutely cratered” over the last two years. This has left key local industries starved for workers.
“In the agriculture sector, and the hospitality sector, folks in those areas are saying, ‘We need labour. We need people coming in to work here,’” he says.
As the provincial government pushes forward with voting questions this fall that Nenshi calls “anti-immigrant,” he argues the UCP is focused on dividing people instead of looking at the real needs of rural businesses.
While politicians continue to point fingers at each other over votes and policy, the hard science behind the AI boom—and what its massive footprint means for the province’s future—remains largely pushed to the sidelines.
For northern Alberta to survive the mix of AI technology and major population shifts, Nenshi says the province must stop treating real-world economic issues like a political game.
“We have to have a very honest conversation about the population growth levels that we think are right, and what we need to sustain our communities,” Nenshi says. “We can solve that problem thoughtfully, by working with partners and working with industry, instead of just demonizing immigrants.”
