Mark Carney endorses Bell Canada's Saskatchewan AI infrastructure project
Former Bank of Canada chief backs largest Canadian AI network as sovereignty play, sparking fierce backlash over jobs, environment, and water use.
What to know
- Mark Carney framed Bell Canada's Saskatchewan AI data center as essential for Canadian AI sovereignty and prosperity.
- Commenters overwhelmingly oppose the project, citing job losses, environmental and water impacts, and taxpayer subsidies.
- A secondary dispute emerged: some commenters argue AI infrastructure is necessary to prevent data storage in the US; opponents counter that the resource costs are prohibitive.
- The project's power requirements drew specific criticism—one commenter noted it would use four times the power needed for the city of Regina.
The dispute Whether Canada needs domestic AI infrastructure to maintain digital sovereignty (minority view) versus whether AI investment is fundamentally harmful and should be abandoned entirely (dominant view). · positions read across 102 posts and comments
AI infrastructure is economically and environmentally destructive and should not proceed without strict regulation and worker protections.
-
“We do not want this. We do not need this.”
disastromatic.bsky.social · Bluesky comment ↗
Canada needs domestic AI infrastructure for digital sovereignty and to avoid dependence on US data storage.
-
“Either we are serious about our digital sovereignty and build our own infrastructure to support it in Canada or we are not and willing to continue to let Americans dominate us.”
citytechie.bsky.social · Bluesky comment ↗
Bell Canada is untrustworthy and will use public subsidies to entrench monopoly power at public expense.
-
“Didn't Bell take tax dollars subsidies early on in the pandemic and then laid off many journalists and reporters while allowing shareholders to profit?”
bethechange1682.bsky.social · Bluesky comment ↗
Mark Carney Former Bank of Canada governor, AI sovereignty advocateBell Canada Telecommunications company, AI infrastructure builder
How it unfolded 1 development · click the chart to see its coverage postscomments
-
1
Commenters oppose AI infrastructure on economic and environmental grounds
The Bluesky post sparked immediate backlash. Commenters raised concerns about job losses, environmental impact, water consumption, and the use of taxpayer money. Multiple voices characterized the project as a mistake and criticized both AI and Bell Canada's track record.
“I don't want my very hard-earned money spent on something that will take thousands of jobs away!”
— fellowhuman666.bsky.social -
M
Prosperity in the age of AI will belong to the nations that can build, adopt, and govern it on their own terms. Bell Canada is building the largest Canadian AI infrastructure network in Saskatchewan — a major step in growing our sovereign AI capacity here at home.
2 more of the top 3 · 102 posts in this stretch
-
“The underlying purpose of Al is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth.”
-
We do not want this. We do not need this.
-
-
background
Mark Carney endorses Bell Canada's Saskatchewan AI infrastructure project — Carney posted on Bluesky that Bell Canada is building the largest Canadian AI infrastructure network in Saskatchewan, describing it as a major step in growing sovereign AI capacity. He framed the project within a broader argument that prosperity in the AI age belongs to nations that can build, adopt, and govern AI on their own terms.
What people are saying 21 voices from 1 site · best of 102 · verbatim
- What are the specific water and power consumption figures for this project, and how will Saskatchewan manage those demands?
- Will the project create net job losses or gains in Saskatchewan?
- What regulatory framework will govern the data center's environmental impact and worker protections?
- Sep 15
-
Just so we are clear, this data centre is going to require FOUR TIMES the power needed for the entire city of Regina. This is insane.
- Sep 14
-
And this nation will be able to govern these large corporations properly? Since when? #MarkCarney #cdnpoli #abpoli
-
This is a massive mistake on environmental, social, and national security grounds. Please reconsider.
-
We need "data centres" for more basics than AI. Work with Canadian providers, perhaps like OVH, to migrate government from foreign cloud services to Canadian domiciled ones. Create standards for doing business with gov't requiring proof of Canadian data residency.
-
you've been flim flammed, AI is a canard. CEO suckers fall for this yet AI has not made any money. The winning move is not to play. The winning move is to take it out of education. The winning move is to ban data centres
-
AI will destroy us. It costs people their jobs it is bad for the environment, for animals and will use up our most precious resource -water. Please stop with the AI. Do better.
-
You don't want to build a data center in Canada so that we can keep medical data in Canada? Where would you like to store our data instead: the US, or do you think Mexico would be an option? I don't think pen and paper would work.
-
L after L after L. We can't build AI infrastructure until it's legislated strongly. The databases need to be comprehensible(ie. the people administering them need to be able to clearly point to how the AI learned a specific thing), the environmental impact needs to be mitigated, (1/2)
-
intellectual property rights need to be respected, and we need a strong support infrastructure for employees who lose their job as a result of this - UBI or the like - investigated early so we can prepare for this. We can't just build it and let it go free and hope for the best.
-
False. This is a huge bubble waiting to burst
-
You want our data stored in the US instead because businesses won't have a place to store their data in Canada?
-
building our own AI capacity must come with hard regulations and protections for workers jobs. Additionally making Data Centers become net contributors to solving climate change would further speed up the transition while slowing it down enough for the Government to regulate it.
-
You’re going to use it to hoard data on us that you gather from Bill C-22.
-
Maybe put that money into your healthcare system Unless you’re planning on using AI to solve our medical problems
-
Fuck digital asbestos and fuck you for enabling this bullshit
-
Oh god, still banking on the AI bubble? Hello!!!! Taxpayer here! I don't want my very hard-earned money spent on something that will take thousands of jobs away!
-
Didn’t Bell take tax dollars subsidies early on in the pandemic and then laid off many journalists and reporters while allowing shareholders to profit?
-
AI isn’t sustainable. Please don’t champion it
-
Revolting. Ai has no place in Canada. It's a plague.
-
Oh good less clean drinking water in a province where 1 in 5 people don't have a GP
-
D
It'll probably belong to the nations who build actual things instead of software that can't spell