REGINA – The provincial government has confirmed that Bell Canada will be building a 90,000 square foot AI data centre development outside of Regina.
The data centre will be built starting this spring in the RM of Sherwood and it is estimated to create over 800 jobs through the duration of the construction, according to the province. The province said there will be a minimum 80 jobs associated with the ongoing operation of the facility and an additional 750 additional economic spin-offs for a minimum of 1630.
Once it is built it will be the largest facility of its kind in Canada, according to the province. The project is estimated at $12 billion.
In speaking to reporters Mirko Bibic, President and CEO of BCE Inc and Bell Canada, explained why Saskatchewan was chosen for the project.
“Well, it comes down to the reason we are so keen to invest the largest amount of money we've ever invested in the province is the spirit of collaboration and ambition that the Premier and his team has shown,” Bibic said.
“They want to drive investment, bring investment to the province, drive economic activity and productivity. So when we came here several months ago to visit with the Premier and explain what our vision was for Bell AI Fabric, they quickly understood what our ambition was and there was a meeting of the minds and this is an action-oriented group of people and so are we.”
Bibic noted that the first site they launched was in Mission Flats, BC, 7 megawatts, not 300 megawatts and that was focused on hydroelectric power.
But he said the ambition is for Bell AI Fabric to “be at the heartbeat of AI development in Canada, to have an interconnected system of AI data centres across the country. And you need the power in order to deliver that compute capacity and we have here a province that is willing to make that compute power available to generate that compute capacity at scale.”
“So what we're doing here is building the largest AI data centre in Canada at scale. So we're moving beyond Canada being specialists in AI research, we're moving now to industrialisation which is what drives economic growth and productivity.”
Premier Scott Moe noted that Saskatchewan is “one of the few areas in North America where we do have available power in the size and scope that's required for us to have a serious conversation about data sovereignty in Canada, and we do need to play a role in that.”
“Second to that, as we look ahead the next number of years and we've been, I think, very bold about the ambitions that we have in ensuring that we have a reliable power grid but also an affordable power grid as we move to nuclear power and nuclear technology in this province, likely looking now at more large-scale reactors to satisfy the power needs that we will need in the future.”
More to come…
