The Canadian Coalition For Digital Infrastructure (CCDI), which dubs itself a “united industry voice” advocating for data centres, registered to lobby in Ontario about policies related to the controversial facilities.

The CCDI is made up of some of the biggest players in the AI industry, including Google, Meta and Amazon, as well as infrastructure partners like Beacon Data Centres, Canadian construction company EllisDon and European power company Schneider Electric.

In an Oct. 27 filing, CCDI registered its intentions to “advocate for policies that promote and enable digital infrastructure growth to support Ontario’s digital ambitions.”

As policies try to keep up with development, some Ontario residents are voicing concerns about potential noise and environmental effects, as well as energy costs associated with AI data centres.

Across the country, the CCDI’s members are behind 81 data centres, representing about a quarter of the 333 facilities that have been built or proposed in the country, according to information posted to the site Data Center Map.

Ontario has the most data centres or proposals of any province, with 108. CCDI’s members are behind 19 of those centres.

That number is expected to grow in the coming years. In August, Ontario’s government announced its Data Centre Playbook, a strategy aimed at attracting “the best data centre investments.”

The strategy proposes to attract AI companies with “non-financial incentives,” like winter weather that means lower energy costs for cooling.

The strategy promises new data centres will have to pay for their own electricity use to ensure Ontarians’ energy bills do not go up when an energy-hungry data centre moves in, a frequent concern surrounding the centres.

The playbook says it will also give priority to Canadian projects.

But as provincial and federal governments look to accelerate domestic data centre development, some residents are pushing back.

In Hamilton, Ont., hundreds protested a proposed data centre in June, citing health and environmental concerns.

In Mississauga, municipal leaders voted in September to establish a one-year moratorium on all new data centre projects after residents voiced concerns about some major proposals. That decision followed a similar moratorium in nearby Oakville, which passed about a month earlier.

Neither the Ontario government nor CCDI responded to the IJF's questions.

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