AI policy, data rights, platform regulation, digital infrastructure
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.
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.
The companion policy proposal, companion to this one, looked at what happens when businesses, public bodies, employers, contractors, institutions, and service providers use camera-capable wearable technology in places where people are asked to expose sensitive information.
If an organization requires you to show sensitive information, it has a duty to protect that information from unnecessary recording, whether by staff, contractors, wearable devices, background software, or nearby third parties.
Privacy cannot depend on whether someone notices a tiny light on a pair of glasses.
This proposal is designed to ensure that Canadians can see when products have been quietly reduced in size, weight, volume, or content; that governments can measure where grocery profit is actually being taken across the entire supply chain; that essential food prices are not personalized through surveillance-based pricing; and that loyalty-program members can see how their data is being collected, shared, and monetized.
Download the PDF Every job posting asks something of the applicant. It asks for time, attention, employment history, education history, references, contact information, salary expectations, and often enough personal detail to build a profile of a person’s working life. That exchange should come with obligations. If a job is not real, not active, already filled,…