Hamilton's mysterious data centre reversal haunts other municipalities
A rendering of the new industrial park planned for the former Stelco site. Illustration courtesy: Slate Asset Management
By Cloe Logan & Rory White
A proposed municipal pause on AI data centres in Hamilton, Ont., seemed like a done deal.
“We were all telling ourselves: this is it. This is the last one – after this we’re done,” said local data centre opposition organizer Nick Tsergas.
All but one of the 16 elected officials in the city had voted in favour of a bylaw that would put a pause on new data centres in the city for a year, giving them time to review the impacts — both positive and negative — before opening the door to the industry.
Then, suddenly, the majority of council flipped. At a council meeting the following month when the bylaw was expected to pass, 10 councillors voted against the bylaw, while six voted in favour. At the mid-July meeting, Mayor Andrea Horwath said the bylaw would “hold back Hamilton and reduce opportunity for many, many Hamiltonians and for generations to come.”
Coun. Cameron Kroetsch describes it differently. “Basically, what happened here is we gave up the only card we could play in this discussion,” he said. Interim control bylaws are one of the only mechanisms a city has to manage this type of development, since the provincial energy regulator decides whether to give data centres a power grid connection.
Despite the reversal in Hamilton, its opposition movement has inspired copycat groups across Canada. Tsergas told Canada’s National Observer that his Hamilton-based organization Stop the Datacentres is now a “federated” advocacy organization, with municipal chapters in Ontario, BC, Newfoundland and Alberta.
“I think I've had close to 20 [chapters] reach out,” said Tsergas. “They're using the blueprint that we developed in Hamilton, but they're customizing it according to where they are,” he added.
This reporting is produced with support from I-SEA’s Climate Solutions project and is not behind National Observer’s subscriber paywall. Readers are asked to create a FREE National Observer account to access the full article.