When Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation went to court recently to challenge Alberta’s handling of the proposed Wonder Valley AI Data Centre Park project, the dispute underscored a question that is increasingly difficult to ignore: What does Canada’s artificial intelligence future require from land, water and energy systems?
Wonder Valley, which would be located south of Grande Prairie, has been advertised as the world’s largest AI data centre park. Alberta’s major projects listing describes its first phase as a 1.4-gigawatt off-grid power system leveraging the provincial natural gas and geothermal resources.
The project is only one example of a broader trend. The federal government’s new “AI for All” strategy links AI to economic growth, jobs and national competitiveness. The strategy also points to expanding “sovereign compute” and supporting the construction of large-scale AI data centres.
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