While the AI wars continue, a local battle is won

Opponents of an Ile des Chenes AI date centre were elated at the start of June when plans for the facility in their community were shelved. Concerns over noise, energy needs and water consumption were all factors for people living in the area to be squarely against the proposal.

But the battle against such facilities may be far from over.

Local activist Christie Little said she knows there’s more to do.

“I was elated when the project here got squashed, but I’m not naive. This isn’t over. We need governments and regulators to seriously reconsider what they’re doing. We can’t have these things in Manitoba. We need to be smart about this,” she said.

Policies regarding AI, such as the federal government’s new AI data strategy released June 4, 2026, that aims to make Canada an international AI leader, and Manitoba’s Solution Grants program along with Bills 49 and 51 that regulate consumer privacy and public sector use, mean that AI data centres are, in the words of Premier Wab Kinew, “Coming to Manitoba.” There are already nine in Winnipeg alone.

AI and its required infrastructure are all part of a multifaceted problem facing communities and decision-makers, as the impact of AI on children, on workers in the job market, and on the world stage as superpowers like China, Russia and the U.S. all vie for supremacy in conjunction with the “tech bros” that own the technology, to assert control of it.

However, it’s control over AI and its data that has become the prominent issue for those trying to legislate the technology. Data Sovereignty is now the foremost concern for legislators, and particularly for residents in communities like Ile des Chenes, as the need to keep infrastructure and data locally owned and controlled means building the required data centres within Manitoba.

Large scale facilities like the one that was proposed for Ile des Chenes may be stalled there, but they will be built, and smaller capacity centres to address sovereignty concerns are popping up all across Manitoba. The ideal location in Ile des Chenes, with its access to water and natural gas, is still a prime location.

Little, who was so instrumental in the fight against the immense data centre that would have been built across the street from her house, knows the AI wars and the placement of such facilities are only just beginning in small and rural communities like hers.

“We can’t have gigantic empty buildings sitting on valuable farmland all over Manitoba. Look at China for example, where huge freshly-built warehouses sit empty and idle on productive land while they try to figure out what to do with them. We can be much smarter in our approach,” said Little.

The struggle over where to place the facilities that make AI possible continues across Canada, and Little is now consulting with groups resisting the resource-intensive installations being placed in strategic locations where communities already exist. “I speak with groups in B.C., Alberta and here in Manitoba regarding lessons learned in resisting these projects, and how to stop these things where people make their homes,” said Little.