Alberta AI Data Center Truth Before Reconciliation
The Assault Expands to Includes Meta
In case you missed it, Premier Smith, Gary Demasi (Vice President of data center development & strategy at Meta), Nate Glubish (Alberta's Minister of Technology and Innovation), RJ Sigurdson (Alberta's Minister of Affordability and Utilities), and Alanna Hnatiw Mayor of Sturgeon County) announced a new AI data Centre near my home town of St. Albert, in Sturgeon County at a Calgary Stampede event this week. https://www.cpac.ca/headline-politics/episode/alberta-premier-smith-announces-meta-will-build-a-data-centre--july-8-2026.
Here’s what Meta and Smith had to say—with some Truth Before Reconciliation!:
Sturgeon County, Alberta is identified as home to Meta’s newest data center, their first in Canada and largest guinea pig facility outside of the US.
A 2.9 million square foot facility (or 33 CFL football fields, (hat tip to Brandi Morin) representing an investment of more than 13 billion Canadian dollars.
Meta is hoping to toe in with an itty bitty 1 gW—like adding one million homes in terms of power usage to an area with 3500 residents—and expects future large-scale expansion.
The Government of Alberta (GOA) announces SUBSIDIES, the annual Data Centre Community Action Grants program, via local nonprofits.
Use of water-efficient closed loop liquid cooling system with dry cooling requiring no operational water for cooling. Here is a great article explaining this system is not truly closed, will use excess power to expel excess heat, and cause extreme evaporation. And this system just failed in Wyoming courtesy of Meta last week! Adding a bacteria to the water: Meta AI Data Center Linked To Rare Bacteria In City’s Water System.
Goal to be water positive by 2030, restoring more water than consumed in local watersheds partnering with ALUS and local farmers to conserve 200 acres of grasslands, trees and wetlands in the North Saskatchewan River watershed. Conserving is not restoring water, rather ending fossil fuel expansion, cleaning up and restoring well, pipeline, and facility sites is.
Suggests a very high number of jobs which will be mostly short-lived related to the construction phase.
Government/Provincial Commitments:
New digital infrastructure connecting Alberta to broader North American networks via the Cloud Act. That’s right, your data will be completely accessible to the Trump Regime.
Albertans could see a reduction of up to 6% on the transmission portion of their utility bill IF the Greenlight project proceeds. Meta is NOT responsible to making the Greenlight happen. And by the way Greenlight is simply a combined-cycle gas power plant. It’s not a new technology, it is how every natural gas power plant should have been designed in Alberta but wasn’t made mandatory. There is NOTHING innovative here.
Sturgeon County Commitments:
The Sturgeon County Mayor claims she will continue to set high standards on power, water, environmental stewardship and land use. No data center has been required to carry out an environmental impact assessment yet—will Mayor Hnatiw insist? Will First Nations and residents’ consent be required?
Remember, if Meta was really in it for Alberta it would NOT be:
Running this facility on natural gas, they would be insisting it runs on renewables only, using the least amount of energy and water not the most.
Blocking Canadians from access news sources since August of 2023.
Allowing accounts, individuals, and groups to make money while misinformation Canadians. This excellent report by “What to Fix” shows how Meta’s Monetization Enforcement in Practice requires more than 30 complaints before removing channels caught misinforming. Meta reinstates accounts that mislead and channels money to these bad actors, including political parties, politicians, police, the military, and sanctioned groups in other jurisdictions.
Funding the fossil fuel industry and the far right’s agenda. Alberta’s own Geoff Dembicki—the founder of Desmog—Mapped Poilievre’s Inner Circle of Lobbyists and Right-wing Activists in March 2025. The mapping shows how Facebook supported Poilievres “Project 2025” agenda in last years’ Canadian election.
Jeff Dembicki also wrote The Petroleum Papers which explains how crucial Alberta’s oil and gas industry is to the global climate misinformation machine.
But wait, there’s more… like a lot more!
Here is the current list of the Alberta Data Centers - Providers Map in Alberta, Canada, it lists 57 centers as of today. I HIGHLY recommend you visit The Real Knitty on Instagram. She does a deep dive on the Beacon AI Centres. I won’t do her investigative work justice so please view it here: 🫠🫠And a $13B meta one was just announced 🫠🫠 ya know, the company that just poisoned a bunch of people at a different data centre location.
To sum up Knitty’s findings:
Beacon AI appears to point to a Lord from Northern Ireland.
The company has ties to the Cayman Islands and Delaware—places known to hide fraud and ownership. Epstein file type sketchiness here.
The changes to the Water Act made by R.J. Sigurdson, in his role as Minister of Agriculture, are clearly coming into play to support the AI data Centre assault on Albertans.
And former CPC MP and Alberta PC MLA Ken Hughes is on the board of directors, aiding the navigation around the rules here.
Water Not Coal and the Referendum
If this news isn’t enough to make your heart stop, the inability of Elections Alberta to validate the Water Not Coal campaign is pointing to some serious concerns related to their ability to count ballots in the referendum. It will cost an estimated $130 million dollars. For reference, the 2023 election had 13,000 employees and 1.7 million ballots cast. This referendum requires 60,000 workers for potentially 45 million ballots! Even Braid is sounding the alarm: Corb Lund petition fiasco signals trouble for Oct. 19 referendum blitz.
TAKE ACTIONS!
Tell Environment Minister Grant Hunter to BAN AI Datacenters:
Call or email Premier Smith to demand she cancel the referendum, stop the taxpayer waste and sure-to-fail validation process.
Join or donate your Dani Dollars to Public Interest Alberta’s “Together—NO!” campaign, stop Smith’s racist and divisive agenda!
Truth Before Reconciliation!
Thanks Holly Standingready for the great t-shirt and assertion: we cannot reconcile when we’re being actively mislead by our governments. Support the Treaty Chiefs in their fight to uphold the treaties or your community may be the next environmental sacrifice zone as Brandi Morin explained.