One commonly overlooked aspect of continuing AI proliferation, as recently championed by Prime Minister Mark Carney, is that it necessitates the construction of large-scale data centres that often require an inordinate amount of land, water and electricity.
In Ontario, the landscape is evolving quickly. There are more than a hundred data centres currently in operation, representing about 40 percent of the number in Canada. In Cambridge, a next-generation hybrid cloud and AI computing campus came online in March 2024, giving the region a taste of what the future might look like if additional facilities are constructed locally.
Robert McLeman of Wilfrid Laurier University and Tony La Mantia of the Waterloo Economic Development Corporation [Submitted]
