REGINA, Sask. — Opposition attempts to obtain more information about the government’s MOU with Bell Canada regarding the AI data centre did not get very far at the legislature Tuesday.
An emergency motion from Saskatoon Southeast MLA Brittney Senger called for the government to release the full text of the MOU with Bell Canada for the hyperscale data centre being constructed in the RM of Sherwood.
But the emergency motion needed unanimous consent to proceed, and the Sask. Party majority voiced its disapproval, ending that effort.
Speaking to reporters later, NDP trade critic Kim Breckner went on the attack, pointing to “no transparency from this government.”
In particular, Breckner once again pointed to an issue raised the previous day by the NDP: investments by Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. in the companies Cerebras and CoreWeave, both of which are tenants at the new data centre. She didn’t buy the explanations she heard from the government in question period.
“We heard today that either they knew about the Trump connection to the tenants of the data centre and were keeping it from Saskatchewan people, or they didn't do their due diligence and had no idea about the Trump connection to the two companies that will be tenants in this data centre.”
Breckner challenged the government on why it was refusing to make the MOU public.
“I mean, it's being advertised as one of the crowning achievements,” Breckner said.
“You would think that maybe a government would be proud to release something like that…. If there's such greatness here, if there's nothing to hide, why not release the information? Why not provide the transparency that people are asking for? Why not come out and show the details, or at least answer the questions that we have about the economic benefits, power rates, the environment, concerns that people legitimately have around this project.”
In response to the barrage of questions in question period Tuesday, Minister of Crown Investments Corporation Jeremy Harrison had said the companies Cerebras and CoreWeave were “publicly traded companies” that have a “broad opportunity for people to participate.”
He pointed to some of the owners of Cerebras being TD Waterhouse Canada, RBC Dominion Securities, the Bank of Nova Scotia, BMO Asset Management, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, the Caisse de dépôt, the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, CI Financial and AGF Investments.
Harrison called the questions from the NDP “absurd” and accused them of “jumping the shark.”
“And let’s be very, very clear, Mr. Speaker, what the objectives of the opposition are,” Harrison said. “They want to stop this project, just like they have wanted to stop every other major investment into this province, because they are anti-investment, they are anti-development, and they are anti-jobs.”
