Alberta has powered the world for generations. Now we’re helping power the AI economy.

Section 1

What is a data centre, really?

A data centre is a warehouse full of computers. Rows of powerful servers, stacked in racks, connected to the internet, running around the clock.

You have been using them for 20 years. Every email you send lives in a data centre. Every photo you back up, every show you stream, every e-transfer you send, every medical record your doctor pulls up.

When people say “the cloud,” they mean a data centre. There is no cloud. There is just somebody else’s computer, in a big building, doing work on your behalf.

AI data centres are the next generation of the same infrastructure. Instead of mostly storing information, they are built to think. They house thousands of specialized chips working together as one giant computer, training AI models and answering the millions of questions people ask AI tools every minute.

Because they do far more work, they need far more power. Same concept. Much bigger engine.

Section 2

AI is already working for Albertans

Alberta Wildfire uses an AI model, built with an Edmonton company, to predict where wildfires are likely to ignite the next day, with about 80 per cent accuracy. Better predictions put crews, aircraft and heavy equipment in the right place before the first spark.

Around the world, AI systems are designing personalized cancer vaccines, discovering new antibiotics, and helping radiologists catch what human eyes alone might miss.

None of this should surprise Albertans, because part of it was invented here. The University of Alberta and the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute are home to Dr. Richard Sutton, winner of the 2024 Turing Award, computing’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Every one of these tools runs on physical infrastructure. Real buildings, real chips, real electricity. PwC estimates AI could add US$15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, and every dollar of it will flow through a data centre somewhere. Refusing to build them would not make AI go away. It would just mean the jobs, taxes and investment land somewhere else, while Albertans keep using digital services powered by someone else’s economy.

Section 3

Think of them as digital refineries

For fifty years, Albertans have asked the same two questions. Why don’t we refine more of our own resources here at home? And why is it so hard to get what we produce to the people who want it?

Data centres answer both.

Alberta produces about 60 per cent of Canada’s natural gas. A data centre refines that gas, in stages, into the most valuable commodity of our time. Gas becomes electricity. Electricity becomes computing power. Computing power becomes intelligence: the answers, predictions and tools the world is buying.

Then the product ships through fibre optic cable, at the speed of light. A digital pipeline that crosses borders without a decade of regulatory battles, carries the finished product instead of the raw one, and never sells at a discount.

Who captures that value?

Albertans deserve a clear-eyed answer, so here it is. On a project like Meta’s, Alberta captures the value of the gas, the electricity, and everything built to deliver them: new pipelines, new power plants, new fibre routes, new supply chains, and the taxes and levies collected at every step. Meta keeps the value of the intelligence itself. That is a fair trade, because Meta paid 100 per cent of the costs and carries 100 per cent of the risk.

The bigger prize comes next. Meta’s project proves that gigawatt-scale AI infrastructure can be built in Alberta, and proves it on a private company’s dime. That gives Alberta and Canadian companies a roadmap to follow. When domestic players build their own data centres, the full value of turning our resources into intelligence stays home, for the benefit of Albertans and Canadians.