Bell data centre under construction in Rosser

Bell Canada is building Manitoba’s newest data centre in a former plant-based protein processing plant.

Construction began at the old Merit Functional Foods hub, in the Rural Municipality of Rosser, earlier this year.

Bell announced last year it’d create a national network of artificial-intelligence facilities. The Manitoba space, beyond the west edge of Winnipeg, will hold a “small presence” in the overall project, said David Marcille, Bell senior manager of media relations.

The South Interlake Planning District oversees permitting in Rosser. Since January, it’s approved at least three building and development permits for the data centre.

Construction costs total at least $31.5 million, the permits show. The facility — off Brookside Boulevard — will include data halls and will undergo mechanical and electrical upgrades, among other things.

It requires 5.5 megawatts of power and will use a closed-loop cooling system, meaning municipal water supplies won’t be drawn on, Marcille wrote in a statement.

Projects must proceed through “established regulatory approvals as required,” Manitoba Innovation Minister Mike Moroz said in a statement.

Decisions and details rest with the proponents, the statement added.

Merit Functional Foods vacated the 94,000 square-foot building after going into receivership in 2023. It defaulted on $95 million in loans to Farm Credit Corp., and Export Development Canada.

The new data centre could boost the economy and create jobs, noted John Anderson, a University of Manitoba computer science professor who researches artificial intelligence. However, environmental costs are also a consideration, he said.

“There’s a balancing act in all of these things,” Anderson said. “It’s a conversation you’d have to have with each and every data centre.”

Moroz had been directed to look at “the ownership of intangible assets,” such as intellectual property, data and AI, in a first-of-its-kind innovation report a task force released last year.

The global economy has been transforming from a system “rooted in physical production of tangible goods” to intangible assets, the report reads.

Bell has been touting its new network as infrastructure for AI sovereignty. It recently said it’d build a $1.7 billion data centre in Saskatchewan. The centre would use 300 MW of electricity.

Bell has also slated facilities for Kamloops and Merritt, B.C.

Bell’s new Manitoba site falls inside CentrePort Canada, a trimodal inland port spanning Rosser and Winnipeg. Bell has a role “strengthening digital infrastructure,” Carly Edmundson, CentrePort president, wrote in a statement.

Rosser Reeve Ken Mulligan declined to comment.

— Gabrielle Piché