What economic benefits could AI data centres bring to Canadian communities?
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centres → bring → communities
More research is needed on the impact of large-scale data centres, academic says
Amid a boom in planned "hyperscale" AI data centres in Canada, the companies building them are making big promises about the economic benefits they will bring.
EverWind Fuels, the company behind recently announced plans for a proposed 420-megawatt data centre campus in Nova Scotia, forecasts about 115 permanent, on-site data centre positions.
It is also projecting $1.5 billion in provincial corporate income tax over an initial 20-year term.
In Saskatchewan, Bell says there could be hundreds of permanent operations and management jobs created from a massive, planned AI data centre expansion.
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Bell → need → expansion
To get an idea of how realistic these kinds of promises are, CBC News spoke with academics who have studied the economic benefits of data centres in the United States.
"The benefits tend to be spread across a region through tax revenue and jobs, while the costs, such as power, water, land use and noise, fall on the people who live closest to the site," said Georgia Institute of Technology assistant professor Daniel Yue in an email.
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Yue → get → email
In April, Yue and a colleague published a paper with the results of a study that compared counties in the U.S. that got their first data centre in the last 20 years with similar counties that did not.
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that → publish → counties
The economic gains "are modest, but real," Yue said, "and they build over time.
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they → say → time
The study found gains in employment, wages and the number of businesses after the first few years.
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study → find → years
Over a longer period of five years or more after the first data centres arrive, Yue said employment increases by about 3.5 per cent and wages by about five per cent.
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employment → arrive → cent
In terms of permanent jobs, Greg Wright, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, says data centres create "very few" of them, relative to the size of the investment needed to build them.
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centres → say → them
Wright co-authored a study for the American think tank that examined the employment impacts of 1,500 U.S. data centre facilities.
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that → co → facilities
"A lot of the people are specialists in data centre management, and so they'll be people who are brought in from the outside," said Wright, also an associate professor of economics at the University of California, Merced.
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Wright → bring → California
Positions for things like security and maintenance, however, "will probably draw from the local community."
Yue, meanwhile, found economic benefits are not equally distributed.
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benefits → draw → community
He said the largest difference observed was between metropolitan and rural areas.
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difference → say → areas
"In non-metropolitan counties, we can't detect any change in employment, wages or construction activity," Yue said, noting that applying the study's results to Canadian provinces requires extrapolation.
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applying → detect → extrapolation
According to Yue, rural jurisdictions did see some benefits, including household income gains and lower unemployment.
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jurisdictions → accord → gains
But the estimates are less precise because there are fewer rural data centres in the data studied.
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estimates → be → data
A possible explanation for those results is that urban areas already have the economy and workforce to support the needs of a data centre, so more spending stays local.
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spending → have → centre
Protesters and counter-protesters clash at a protest against a proposed Meta artificial intelligence data centre in Morinville, Alta., on Aug. 2, 2026.
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Protesters → clash → Aug.
Meta has proposed building a one-gigawatt artificial intelligence data centre in Sturgeon County.
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Meta → propose → County
Wright says one of the primary benefits of building a data centre comes in the form of tax revenue, which can then fund public services and infrastructure.
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which → say → services
"These data centres will pay a lot of tax to the local community," Wright said.
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Wright → pay → community
However, "historically, part of the problem is that communities have also been giving concessions to those data centre companies," such as tax breaks, which offset the economic gains.
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which → give → gains
He says the Nova Scotia data centre proposal is an example of a new approach from the industry.
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proposal → say → industry
One of the promises from the proponent EverWind is to establish a community development program with money for local communities on top of tax payments.
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One → establish → payments
"There’s huge backlash against data centres and so these operators kind of realize that they need to kind of sweeten the pot," Wright said.
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Wright → realize → pot
On Thursday, Nova Scotia Finance Minister John Lohr told reporters the province has not ruled out providing tax breaks.
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province → tell → breaks
According to Wright, more research needs to be done on the economic impacts of data centres.
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research → accord → centres
He adds that many newer data centres are built on a much larger scale.
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centres → add → scale
Your questions answered
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questions → answer → ?
Supersized data centres are coming to Canada.
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centres → come → Canada
One province is at the epicentre
Wright says communities will need to be vigilant about whether data centre developers follow through on their commitments and promises.
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developers → say → commitments
"Over the next few years we're going to see that ... and hopefully the story is a good one."
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story → go → that
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