Ottawa Distances Itself From 20-Gigawatt Data Centre Figure Used in Investor Pitch

A slide deck built for Canada’s artificial intelligence minister to use in front of international investors contained a striking claim about the country’s data centre ambitions one that government officials are now walking back.

The presentation, prepared for Minister Evan Solomon by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and signed off by Associate Deputy Minister Mark Schaan, put Canada’s current AI data centre capacity at roughly 337 megawatts. But it went further, stating that more than 20 gigawatts of additional capacity upwards of 20,000 megawatts was “under planning or development” across the country.

That figure, obtained by The Canadian Press under access-to-information law, is enormous by any measure. It would represent close to a sixtyfold jump from where Canada stands today. Yet government spokespeople are now cautioning that the number should not be mistaken for a genuine forecast of what will actually get built.

According to a background statement provided to The Canadian Press, the 20-gigawatt figure was never meant to function as a prediction. Officials described it instead as a rough, one-time tally of publicly announced and proposed private projects from across the country, lumped together regardless of how far along they actually were some barely more than early-stage proposals, others much closer to shovel-ready. The purpose, the statement said, was simply to convey how much investor interest existed in the Canadian market at that moment, not to suggest all of it would materialize.

Officials were blunt that the real number will land well short of 20 gigawatts. Projects still have to clear a long list of hurdles securing financing, winning regulatory sign-off, lining up electricity supply, and working through negotiations with provinces, municipal governments, utilities, Indigenous communities and local residents. “Most of this proposed capacity is not expected to proceed,” the statement said, adding that whatever portion does move forward could look very different in scale and timing than what was originally pitched.

For comparison, Canada’s own national AI strategy puts the country’s expected commercial AI compute needs at around 5.5 gigawatts by 2030 a fraction of the 20-gigawatt figure that appeared in the investor deck. Much of that demand, the strategy notes, is likely to be met by large hyperscale operators serving both Canadian and international customers.

The 20-gigawatt figure wasn’t a one-off. An earlier briefing note prepared for Solomon back in August 2025 pegged the potential buildout even higher, suggesting that if every proposed AI data centre project in the country were completed, Canada’s total capacity could reach 22.1 gigawatts. That same document argued the buildout could vault Canada into second place among G7 nations for compute capacity trailing only the United States. But the note also flagged an important caveat: a large share of that capacity would ultimately serve major American technology companies rather than Canadian firms.

Solomon’s office told The Canadian Press it could not confirm that the investor-facing deck, dated as received on Jan. 8, 2026, was ever actually shown to anyone outside government. The document itself frames the request behind it plainly, referring to “a short slide deck on Canada’s artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem, suitable for use with international investors.”

The pitch material leans heavily on Canada’s existing strengths, pointing to six established data centre operators already in the country, along with available tax credits. It also touts the reliability of Canada’s power grid, describing the country as backed by “abundant clean sources at affordable prices” and consistent regulation a claim that becomes more complicated once the geography of the proposed projects is taken into account.

The bulk of the proposed 20-plus gigawatts of new capacity would be built in Alberta, and notably, it wouldn’t be drawing from the province’s electrical grid at all. The August 2025 briefing note, marked “commercially confidential,” lays out Alberta’s ambitions in stark terms: the province’s AI Data Center Strategy is aiming to pull in $100 billion in investment, with projects announced so far already totalling more than 18 gigawatts. That power would come not from the grid but from dedicated natural gas plants built to serve the data centres directly.

The environmental math attached to that plan is significant. The same document estimates that if the full 18 gigawatts were built out on natural gas power, it could produce roughly 20 megatonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions annually close to three per cent of Canada’s total emissions in 2023.

While Ottawa and provincial governments have been courting data centre investment, resistance has been building at the local level in multiple provinces.

In Manitoba, Premier Wab Kinew rejected a proposed large-scale data centre southeast of Winnipeg in early June, arguing that its energy demands and community impact outweighed any economic upside. He described the project as posing “a big threat to the environment and not much benefit to the economy.”

Later that month, protesters gathered in Vancouver to demonstrate against the opening of AI data centres in the region.

In Olds, Alberta, residents have organized against a proposed 10-building data centre campus that would rely on 1.4 gigawatts of gas-fired power generation.

And in Hamilton, Ontario, a large data centre campus proposed for the city’s harbourfront has triggered sustained opposition from nearby residents. City council is now weighing a motion that would impose a moratorium on new data centre developments. At a public meeting in June, residents raised concerns ranging from strain on the electricity grid and rising utility bills to round-the-clock noise, water pollution, and heat generated by the facilities impacts they warned would fall hardest on neighbourhoods that already carry a disproportionate share of the city’s industrial burden.

As the gap between the government’s investor-facing numbers and its public messaging draws scrutiny, the tension between promoting Canada as a data centre destination and managing the on-the-ground consequences of that growth appears far from resolved.