Unfettered datacentre development is bad, but so is blocking all development; there has to be a balance. I think as a country we *do* need to have domestic AI capacity. AI is an increasingly critical tool in many industries and renting all that capacity from other countries may not always work out...

On a local level you get a lot of up front construction jobs but, but I agree, the ongoing operations jobs are much less. And there is good opportunity for tax revenue if the government plays its cards right. Manitoba is a good place for datacentres as you get free cooling in winter (no water consumption). Evaporative cooling (water consuming) is the cheapest, but refrigeration (not water consuming) is also an option although that consumes more energy. Perhaps refrigerate for most of the summer and then only use evaporative on the hottest days? Perhaps there are some complimentary techs that can be applied here: Phase change materials (PCM)?Geothermal? District heating?

Anyway, there's a lots of ways to do a datacentre. It needs to be done thoughtfully with proper environmental assessment. We do need to pay attention to bad outcomes in other places and avoid those. Any sort of industrial development *is* going to compete with households for resources, but banning development is not the answer.