The County of Newell is trying to write data-centre rules before major projects arrive. Civic Sketches examines what the draft bylaw gets right, what may still be missing, and proposes real amendments residents and municipalities can adapt, challenge and use.
The FLQ needed an organization to create and maintain a network. Today, the network itself can perform many of the functions that once required an organization.
That does not mean Alberta’s separation movement is a violent extremist movement. It means that “show me the terrorist organization” is no longer an adequate test for determining whether a political environment is beginning to develop conditions in which extra-democratic action becomes more imaginable.
There was a time when publishing a notice in a widely distributed local newspaper provided a reasonable chance that residents would encounter information about a public hearing, rezoning application, infrastructure proposal, regulatory proceeding or government consultation. Local radio and television provided additional common channels through which information could circulate within a geographic community.
That communications environment no longer exists.
There was a time when publishing a notice in a widely distributed local newspaper provided a reasonable chance that residents would encounter information about a public hearing, rezoning application, infrastructure proposal, regulatory proceeding or government consultation. Local radio and television provided additional common channels through which information could circulate within a geographic community.
That communications environment no longer exists.
Social media can distribute information quickly, but algorithms do not show every post to every follower. Not everyone uses the same platforms—or social media at all. Citizens may even be blocked from the accounts of elected representatives who use those accounts to communicate public information.
The result is a growing divide between information being publicly available and the public actually being notified.
A modern public-notice system should close that divide.
Alberta’s “digital refinery” is more than a metaphor. It is part of a broader language campaign that turns foreign-owned data centres into a familiar story about domestic refining, public benefit and technological sovereignty—even when Albertans may control neither the data going in nor the value coming out.
This argument depends on more than a belief that digital services will continue growing. It depends on a much narrower and less certain assumption:
That enormous, centralized hyperscale data centres will remain the dominant way of delivering artificial intelligence long enough to justify the land, water, power plants and public infrastructure now being committed to them.
Developers arrive with lawyers, consultants, economic modelling and prepared policy language. Before the Data Centre Decision gives communities and public representatives a prepared resource from the public side of the conversation—one they can download, adapt to a local project and send directly to the officials responsible for reviewing it.
Major industrial and infrastructure developments must be assessed according to the complete system required for their construction, operation, expansion, and closure. Where a proposed facility depends on related infrastructure, land interests, resource allocations, public services, agreements, or government commitments, those components must be treated as one integrated project.
A Privacy First approach. A model that begins with restraint. A model that treats personal data not as a corporate asset, government convenience, or inevitable byproduct of modern life, but as something powerful enough to damage freedom, dignity, fairness, safety, democracy, and personal autonomy.
When representatives are physically removed from their ridings for long stretches of time, a disconnect forms. Constituents become scheduled appointments instead of daily surroundings. Local concerns become briefing notes instead of lived realities. The capital becomes the centre of political gravity, while the riding becomes a place to visit, campaign in, and occasionally report back to.This policy concept asks a simple question: if modern technology is good enough for corporations, courts, public agencies, and international institutions, why is it not good enough to keep elected officials closer to the people they represent?
This proposal does not require every new structure to power itself completely. That would be unrealistic in many cases. What it does require is that every new building include some form of renewable energy supply or demand-reduction system — solar, wind, geothermal, solar thermal, or an approved equivalent — so that new construction provides at least some relief to the grid it depends on.