WATCH: BC Greens call for moratorium on AI data centres until 'regulatory safeguards' in place

VANCOUVER — The BC Greens have called for a moratorium on AI data centres in the province "until regulatory safeguards are in place to protect people and planet."

The move comes on the heels of an announcement that numerous facilities will be built across British Columbia in the near future.

"I wanna be clear that this isn't a radical idea or demand," leader Emily Lowan told Sitka Media during an exclusive interview at Web Summit on Wednesday. "It's something that the Netherlands and Ireland have already successfully passed, and they were able to get these safeguards met to ensure this basic standard of security for citizen privacy and for our environment."

She noted that across the United States, dozens of regions have passed similar moratoriums.

"It's something that is connecting us across country lines, across party lines," Lowan added. "I think a moratorium is so critical at this moment when we see the provincial and the federal government bullishly chasing the AI bubble with seemingly no concern for our surveillance, for privacy, and the impact that this is going to have on BC's energy and hydroelectricity."

She pointed out that BC is "already importing coal-fired electricity from the United States because of our ever-worsening droughts," and argued that data centres would only exacerbate that dependency.

"It's also a deep concern for data security and privacy," Lowan continued. "[The government] partnered with Telus, who most recently came under fire for releasing one petabyte — that's 1,000 terabytes — of user data accidentally to hackers, and ... decided to offload 14 petabytes of its data to the Google Cloud, which is owned by American tech billionaires."

The facilities developed in partnership with Telus will be located in Vancouver — one downtown and one in Mt. Pleasant. During a press conference on Monday, Telus CEO Darren Entwistle revealed that the latter will be opening in the fourth quarter of 2026, and "continue to scale through 2028" while the former will come online in early 2029.

"It's not one company, it's not one project," AI Minister Evan Solomon added. "It's the infrastructure that Canada needs to compete ... not just in the age of AI, but to build the economy of the future at a time when the political realignment is happening as fast as the technological acceleration."

Both men touted the projects as an integral step on Canada's journey towards "digital sovereignty."

Lowan agreed that digital sovereignty is necessary, but warned there's too much at stake to move forward without ensuring that goal is achieved safely.