Four Regina city councillors seek to examine AI data centre

Bell's AI data centre is being built at a rapid pace just outside of Regina. The centre has expanded to 1.2 gigawatts with support from the provincial and federal governments. But the city has had little say about the development. Four city councillors want to examine how the centre might affect residents. They brought a motion forward asking the city to look into the data centre's impact. Shannon Zekiniak is one of those councillors. She's Ward 8 councillor for the city of Regina. And Shannon joins me now. good morning good morning but what made you want to support this motion councillor um well since the beginning of when i heard about the data center so that was the like with the initial application i thought it was moving too quickly and so i wanted to slow down um and that's what i asked the RM of Sherwood council to do to table it and give it all more time so now that with the expansion i would say i have even more concerns with how quickly it's moving and just want to make sure there's a fulsome analysis of what this is before we rapidly move forward even though that's already that's already happening so do you feel a bit uh helpless at this point because this is going to affect the city in different ways but it's out of the city's hands in many ways counselor yeah sort of um i think you know i think there's not much unfortunately you know that we can do as that I can do as a city councilor in Regina about this data center in the RM of Sherwood but I do think this motion has been useful in pushing further conversations with Bell we've had multiple conversations with Regina City Council members with Bell now and also it's giving folks the opportunity to come speak to us about their concerns unfortunately there's there's not much we can do about those concerns but it's bringing them to light and we can ask for additional information so that is what we have the power as city councillors you know of a different jurisdiction to do and so i feel like i'm doing or and those of us who sign this are doing what we can with the limited powers available to us here.