Manitoba needs clean, publicly owned data centres

Some might disagree, but I believe Winnipeg needs an AI data centre. I am not talking about a huge, polluting warehouse that raises electricity prices and sends profits out of the province.

Manitoba was right to be cautious when Premier Wab Kinew rejected a proposed hyperscale AI data centre southeast of Winnipeg. The concern was not just technology. It was scale, electricity use, community impact and whether the benefits would actually last for Manitobans.

That is exactly the kind of debate we should be having. Recent reporting also noted that Kinew did not reject data centres altogether; he distinguished existing and future data centres from hyperscale projects of a much larger order.

But saying no to one giant private project should not mean saying no to digital infrastructure altogether.

I personally do not believe Manitobans should hand over clean hydro power to private tech companies just because artificial intelligence is the new gold rush.

But I have also come around to a different way of looking at this issue after doing a little digging: the problem is not data centres themselves. The problem is who owns them, who benefits from them and whether they are built as public climate infrastructure or private extraction machines.

That is why I believe we need clean, publicly owned data centres to fight climate change.

The cloud is not just an idea. It is made up of real things: buildings, wires, substations, cooling systems, water, workers, land and electricity. Every AI tool, medical database, cybersecurity system, research project, public record, school platform, and cloud backup needs a physical place to run.

The real question is whether private corporations should control almost all of these places or if the public should own some of them, too.

Manitoba has a unique advantage. The Canada Energy Regulator says Manitoba produced 33.3 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023 and 99.7 per cent of it came from renewable sources, mostly hydro. This clean electricity is more than just a resource — it is something we have built and passed down over generations.

We should not give it away to big tech companies as if it was a discount coupon.

If Manitoba’s clean power is going to help the digital economy, Manitobans deserve more than just construction traffic, private profits and unclear promises about innovation. We should have public ownership, accountability and real public benefits.

The more I consider publicly owned data centres, the more reasonable the idea sounds.

Manitoba has taken this approach before.

We built public power. Manitoba Hydro did not appear by accident. It came from generations of public investment, planning, dams, transmission lines, workers and political choices. Manitoba’s clean grid is one of the main reasons this conversation is even possible.

We built flood protection. The Red River Floodway was built between 1962 and 1968 and cost $63 million at the time. It was once mocked as “Duff’s Ditch.” Today, the province says it has prevented tens of billions of dollars in flood damage in Winnipeg.

We built the water system. The Winnipeg Aqueduct, which carries water from Shoal Lake to Winnipeg by gravity, began construction in 1915 and was completed in 1919. It is still part of daily life in the city, every time someone turns on a tap.

We built public insurance. Manitoba Public Insurance officially opened in 1971 following public hearings that found the private auto insurance system was expensive, inadequate and confusing. Instead of accepting that as normal, Manitoba created a public system for basic, compulsory, universally available auto insurance.

We even built public communications infrastructure. Long before people talked about “digital infrastructure,” Manitoba bought Bell’s Manitoba operations and created Manitoba Government Telephones in 1908. That system later became MTS. It is easy to forget now, after privatization, but Manitoba once treated communication networks as important enough to own publicly.

We built public housing, too. Manitoba Housing was created as a Crown corporation in 1967 because housing could not be left to the market if the goal was to ensure people had stable places to live.

None of these projects were or are perfect. Some sparked debate, some cost a lot and some required political courage. Mistakes were made and we still deal with some of them today. That history should make us more careful, not less ambitious.

A data centre is much more than a warehouse. It is power, heat, water, communications and economic infrastructure. More and more, it is also public-service infrastructure, since health care, education, research, emergency systems, city services and climate modelling all rely on computing power.

So why should we treat data centres as if they are just private property?

A publicly owned data centre would follow a long Manitoba tradition. When something becomes essential to daily life, we should always ask if the public should own part of it.

Hersh Seth is a Winnipeg resident and community organizer.