REGINA, Sask. — The Opposition New Democrats lambasted a government update Thursday over construction progress at the Bell AI Data Centre site.
Speaking to reporters at the Saskatchewan Legislature, Opposition Energy critic Sally Housser ripped the “arrogance that we see from the Scott Moe government and Minister Jeremy Harrison.”
In particular, Housser was steamed about Harrison’s answer to the question of whether the government would hold town halls on the issue of data centres.
“I was really quite blown away when I know that he was asked the question today again, ‘Will you have a town hall about this? Will you do any consultation?’ This is even after the announcement of the increase in size for this data centre and once again he's just said this is a blanket ‘no.’”
Housser also ridiculed a comparison brought up at the news conference that compared those concerned about the construction of the AI data centre to “people who were scared about cars at the turn of the century.”
“That is a shocking lack of respect for the people that he represents here in this province.”
What she wanted to see, said Housser, were “answers to some clear questions… Who's building the power? How much power do we need? Who's the partnership? What it's going to mean for our power bills? And also what we want to know is the lasting impact, the lasting benefit to the people of Saskatchewan and these are questions that I still don't think have been answered.”
As for Bell’s commitment to build its own gas power plants, Housser responded that “absolutely, there is no question we know that this is going to take a massive amount of new power, and we have to think about this in the context of all the other major projects coming online in this province with mining, with working with the federal government on new things being built.”
“So we can't just view this in the context of the AI data centre itself. We need a lot more power for a lot more things and it's also where is the money going to come from. What we want to see is clear answers from Bell, clear answers from the government.”
Housser said that what they had seen “time and time again” with the government is “flashy announcements, very, very light on detail and then what we see happen down the road is costs balloon. The number of jobs it actually creates diminish and it's usually the people of Saskatchewan who are left holding the bag.”
Housser returned again to the lack of a commitment shown for holding consultations.
“I mean honestly today, I just consider it kind of like flipping the bird to the people of this province who have serious questions.
“I think the most basic thing you could do is just have a town hall. Just answer these questions and I've said it before and I hate to keep quoting myself but if this was, if they were as proud of this as they actually say they are, instead of standing out there today with a bunch of people in suits they'd be standing in a town hall answering the questions that people have.”
As for Harrison accusing the NDP of being the party of anti-development, Housser responded that “that's nonsense and the minister knows that.”
“What we want to see is what any business, any industry would see. I think any major industry that is going to construct a project like this wants those answers of how exactly we're going to do it.
“What's the long-term impact? What's the long-term economic benefit? How many workers are we going to need? Listen, we have the best workers, the best building trades in North America here in Saskatchewan. We have the best research facilities…
“It does not make, in my mind, good political sense to just keep plowing ahead with these decisions without answering some of the most basic questions.”
