Risks of Digital Infrastructure

Statement Watch

My name is Cecil Wright. I'm a Vancouver resident, and I'm here to speak to you in favor of the motion. 71% of people in British Columbia oppose a data center being built near them. Two weeks ago, nearly 1,000 people marched on City Hall calling for a halt to this project. I was there, so I can tell you that I did not see a single counter-protester. Average working people in Vancouver do not want this. Let me tell you what we want. We want the city to be honest about who this is for, because we know it's not for people in Mount Pleasant or downtown who are going to be stuck dealing with the noise pollution. We know it's not for everybody who's going to see their BC Hydro bills go up. It's certainly not for the workers in Vancouver who are at risk of getting their jobs replaced by AI. Now, there are ways that this could be done that this motion stipulates that ensure that the people and the workers in these neighborhoods are the primary beneficiaries of this investment instead of TELUS. But we need the city to demonstrate that that is their priority. If you vote no on this motion, the people will know that the priority is bailing out developers like West Bank, which own the very expensive real estate that these two sites sit on, will know that your priority is instead making sure that the TELUS shareholders are able to profit off of this. I want to say that I have friends in this city who work two jobs and can barely afford rent here at a time when we're talking about turning... real estate downtown onto data centers. You know, I've got friends who are nurses out there on the picket lines working through their breaks so that people don't die. And respectfully, this motion is a chance for you to articulate whose side you are on. Vote no on this and try and push these data centers through with no consultation, no regulation, no safeguards. That is on your voting record forever. And I promise that when that buzzing noise starts and when people's power bills start to go up and when the election rolls around, we're going to remember. On this subject, I would recommend listening to the people instead of your 11 AI assistants. You vote no here, you pick your side. That is you telling the working people of Vancouver that you have sold us out. Thank you for your time.

Statement Watch

Thank you, Mayor and Council, for the chance to talk again today. My name is Christopher Lee. I'm a proud lifelong resident of Vancouver, and I'm equally proud to be in support of this motion. First of all, again, I want to thank Councillor Lucy Maloney for her hard work and dedication. I know the people of Vancouver are grateful for you, at least I absolutely am grateful for you. I spoke to my old grade seven English teacher a while ago. I wasn't the best student, but she still wanted to talk to me. We caught up a bit, talked about how awful I was at grade seven language arts, and I started asking questions about the impact AI has had on our classrooms. She told me about the deepening gap with students and English language skills, how AI has already affected her students and education. What's clearest is we don't fully understand the impacts of AI as much as we don't fully understand the impacts of AI data centers. We can look at the wide-reaching economic impacts. We can look at the long-term strategies or whatever, or we can look at the realities on the ground. This impact on a small English classroom in Vancouver, the marching residents opposed to the motion just a few weeks ago, the stories of the impacts on the environment from data centers across North America. This motion takes a principled, skeptical stance on AI, with Vancouverites at the center. This city government cannot continue to ignore the deep risks on water, the environment, and pollution that AI data centers might have. A data center public impact requirement will do just that, protecting Vancouverites from these possible harms. Moreover, we must have the guns to ensure that bad faith big corporations cannot disrupt the beautiful city that we all live in. This motion does just that as well with an enforcement mechanism. We cannot give a blank check to big corporations like Telus. Let me be clear when I say we can't continue to blindly ignore the effects of data centers and AI. However, rushing blindly to respond to data centers and AI isn't an option either. This principled, skeptical stance takes a measured, smart approach to respond to AI. It ensures that people and families must be the focus and beneficiary of any development in Vancouver, and it ensures it. This motion by creating strict critical reviews centered on Vancouverites and their concerns is the most responsible way to go about it. Thank you. And I urge council to adopt this motion, approve it as written without any delay. Thank you so much.

Statement Watch

Perfect. Thank you. My name is Jules Fung, and I'm a Vancouver resident in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood. I'm calling in this motion. The mayor of Vancouver has previously stated that there needs to be balance when it comes to climate action. But what is the point of affordability, the economy, our investments in a so-called booming tech sector, when the place we call home is no longer inhabitable? It's a frightening thing to think about, but it is happening, and we need to wake up. People at kitchen tables are worried about heat domes. Five years ago in 2021, I'm sure many of you know that at least 6,019 people died in the heat dome. Most of them were elders and most died alone in their homes. There weren't enough ambulances to respond. People at kitchen tables are worried about climate change. In 2025, researchers from Health Canada, Oxford, and the University of Bristol published... a study where it found between 11 to 15 percent of deaths were caused by human emissions. Previous science found the 2021 heat wave would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change. People at kitchen tables are worried if you're even listening. The reason why this research is here, the science is here, is to help policymakers like you understand and truly understand the risks associated with climate change and take action. In the words of Counselor Zhou, those who oppose AI and data centers are risking our future. But I'd like to ask, what future would you like to create? The people want a future where we have clean drinking water. The people want a future where our elders are safe. The people want a future where our children are safe. We're not asking for much. I'm calling on you to please support regulation for data centers and safeguards for our community. I'm calling on you to stand up for our future. Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

Statement Watch

Hi, my name is Sarah. I'm a resident of Vancouver. I'm here today to speak in support of Motion 5, addressing the risks of digital infrastructure. I'm a student. I'm a frontline worker. I'm a young person, but most importantly, I'm a concerned member for my community and all the people that live in the city. I'm concerned by the government's actions that are seeming to oppose the well-being of everybody that calls this place home. With the negative impacts of these data centers that are highlighted in Councillor Maloney's motion and well-documented elsewhere, such as high water usage, high electricity usage, heat generation and very little contributions to the local economy. I worry that, and I also know that our community will be the one suffering all of these consequences of the data centers while not getting any profit from it in our local community. We're the ones living here. We're the ones who are impacted directly by these proposed data centers. For example, the city is giving us water restrictions that we are all following as best as we can because we're heavily concerned about the droughts in Vancouver. Meanwhile, these data centers with very little regulation threaten our shrinking water supply. We deserve transparency and accountability from our local, provincial, and federal governments of all of the potential impacts, risks, and detrimental effects that these data centers will have on our health and the well-being of our environment and the land that we live on. And we also deserve to know where the profits of these proposed centers will be going. So I'm in support of Motion 5 as my community, who's most affected by the centers, deserve a council and government who can pause and take a step back and look at all of the effects before going ahead with a plan that could put us and our environment in further danger.

Statement Watch

Hi, my name is Desi Wahuni, and I'm a resident here in Vancouver. I'm here today to speak in support of motion five. I work in a downtown office, which is near the proposed TELUS data center at 150 West Georgia Street. My family of five also lives here in Vancouver. I've been following stories about AI data centers in other places. Lots have been reported about the devastating impact, including most recently a meta data center contaminating the city of Cheyenne's water system with rare bacteria. And this is in Wisconsin, United States. I also learned that AI data centers must avoid any downtime, so they must have backup gas generators, which means more noise and air pollution. Will telemedicine centers use those generators, and what will that mean to our quality of life? This motion will help me get some answers. I also learned what closed-loop cooling system actually means. TELA said it will reduce water consumption, but what they didn't say is it will mean an increase in electricity consumption, not to mention the wastewater from the use of chemicals to treat the water. Is our city ready to handle this? Again, the motion will help me get answers. The latest figures from Ireland's Central Statistics Office show that giant server farms now account for 23% of the country's metered electricity consumption. So this is almost a quarter of it. While back in 2015, it was only 5%. What can we learn from what's happening there? I demand an answer. This is about our immediate future. Like I said, Vancouver is home to my family, and I strongly feel I am responsible to do what I can to prevent a bleak future for my children. This is all feel like we, the residents of the city, are being asked to take the proposed data centers on space, and we refuse. You saw us on the streets protesting with No AI Vancouver. Communities across Canada in Regina, Saskatchewan, Grand Prairie, Alberta, Lornaville, Nova Scotia, and Hamilton, Ontario, are all saying no to proposed data center in their area. In Manitoba, Premier Webb Kinu has said he won't allow AI data center there. And just yesterday, the governor of New York signed an executive order imposing the country's first statewide moratorium on hyperscale data centers. We need the city to develop a data center public impact requirement. Stop the proposed TELUS data centers. I strongly ask you, all city Councillors, to vote in support of this motion. Vote in the best interest of our city's residents. Thank you.

Statement Watch

Hello, Council. My name is Iona Bonamis, and my Chinese name is Tosi Wing. I am speaking in support of this motion because AI data centers require significant levels of energy and water usage, as many people have mentioned, and they take up scarce resources that could otherwise be used for purposes that would be more beneficial for local communities. According to a 2024 report by the Internal Energy Agency, on average, a single query run through ChatGVT needs nearly 10 times more electricity than a standard Google search. And according to a York University study, a typical 100-megawatt data center would consume approximately 400,000 to 700,000 megawatt hours annually, equivalent to the electricity consumption of roughly 40,000 to 64,000 Canadian households. Along with electricity, data centers also have a huge amount of water need for their cooling systems. UN report found that data centers globally consumed 4.5 trillion liters of water in 2025, enough to meet the needs of more than 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. While developers of modern data centers are planning to reduce their energy and water usage compared to traditional... Even if it's an 80% or 90% reduction, they will still require a high level of energy and water usage. And it's important we know what those levels will be and how they will impact our communities. As Councillor Lucy Maloney has pointed out, data centres also release pollutants into our air and create noise and typically lead to fewer jobs being created compared to other land uses. That means they bring in fewer economic benefits to the local community. So before we approve any data centers to come online, the responsible thing for us to do would be to require projects to be assessed by a third party on what their water, greenhouse gas emissions, air contaminants, and noise and heat impacts will be, and how they can mitigate those negative impacts. So in conclusion, I strongly encourage you to approve the motion and be responsible stewards of this city as you are elected to be. Thank you.

Statement Watch

Okay. Hi. My name is Cindy Xiao, and I support Motion 5. I live in Vancouver, and I work as a computer programmer in the cybersecurity industry. Here's an argument I've heard. AI is the future. There's so much demand, the data centers are inevitable. If we regulate them here, they'll just be built somewhere else. The AI industry is actually in a very precarious place right now because they're running out of money. It costs billions to train and run AI systems, and companies are heavily subsidizing the costs of their services for users to keep them cheap and hoping to make you reliant on them. But they're now at a point where they have to raise prices. Because of the price increases, something interesting has happened in the past month inside big companies that previously went all in on AI, including Amazon, Adobe, and Accenture. In just a few weeks, Amazon went from having a leaderboard to see who could spend the most AI tokens to setting strict limits on employee AI usage. At these companies, employees were finding that their custom AI workflows, which they had become reliant on, were now too expensive to run. The industry is asking for a ton of resources, promising the moon, but actually struggling to deliver value that people are willing to pay those higher prices for. What it does deliver is worse than what already exists, incurs additional harms, and makes you reliant on AI. In October, the European Broadcasting Union published a study that found AI summaries misrepresent news 45% of the time. Meanwhile, actual news sites are seeing a 30% to 40% drop in their traffic after Google introduced AI summaries of their content. Worse outcomes, more harms. Next, agentic AI systems, such as the 11 AI agents that Mayor Sim enjoys using, are actually very difficult to design in a secure way. In March, Meta used an agentic AI chatbot system to replace parts of Instagram support. In June, hackers took over Sephora and Barack Obama's Instagram accounts just by asking the agentic AI support bot to reset their passwords. Even for using AI to code, we see problems. Anthropic, the makers of Claude, commissioned a study last year called How AI Assistance Impacts the Formation of Coding Skills. In their own study, they said this, quote, we find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities without delivering significant efficiency gains on average. They also said junior programmers are losing the skills they need to validate code written by AI because those skills are being stunted by using AI in the first place. I want to end with a quote from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. He said this at Davos this year. We will quickly lose even the social permission to actually take something like energy, which is a scarce resource, and use it to generate these tokens. If these tokens are not improving health and education outcomes, public and private sector efficiency across all sectors fall in line. Sorry, Cindy, that's your time.

Statement Watch

My name is Alpha Yu. I'm an illustrator and teacher based in Richmond and I am speaking today in support of Motion 5 to assess whether it is really necessary to build an AI data center in Vancouver. You have heard the environmental impact on both water and noise is severe for such a development, obviously. The point is the water. We're in the middle of a water restriction. It stands to reason we should be hesitant to build this facility. We have video evidence of equivalent facilities in the U.S. making it even sleep difficult for nearby residents, so I am opposed to building the data center anywhere with a civilian population. You wouldn't want to build this next to your house, right? Not to mention, you have heard the aforementioned studies from the University of Maine that show a single Google AI search take over ten times the energy that a query without the AI function would have generated, so I heavily encourage Councillors to consider the fact that the average data center consumes the aforementioned hundreds of megawatt hours of energy, with the equivalent consumption of entire towns. Would such power, if it can even be obtained, not be better generally served across all of Vancouver? Sure, we have hesitancy to fund even cooling centers from previous motions, but we are okay with this level of energy subconsumption, so I urge consistency. But on top of that, there is an ethical concern about AI. I have lost my job to AI. We know Mayor Kinsen has stated he does most of his work with 11 AI agents. If this facility is built, councillors, let us stop him from adding a 12th, 13th, 14th, from replacing your job, honorable councillors. And if you think your job is automation-proof, consider that AI mostly targets automating entry-level positions. Yet multiple studies have shown that it costs less to simply hire an entry-level worker than to use the AI to automate that single worker's job. The stage of exploration is done. We have the data. So obviously, AI takes up Vancouverite's jobs, doesn't generate value for its users. So who gets the value? AI companies. And these are not Canadian companies. They would not bring sufficient value to Vancouverites. I won't take it that you want jobs or money that could be used to stimulate the economy, obviously, flowing out of it. OpenAI is on track to running a $14 billion deficit. Basically, nobody is benefiting from this. In the realm of data, this is a TELUS project through the Cloud Act. Data can be subpoenaed by the American government. So we've heard it said by AI investors that Canada cannot fall behind on AI. We've heard these companies say that AI is inevitable, so we should build as many data centers as we can. But that's the thing. These are the people who would stand the most to profit from such initiatives succeeding. The loudest voice is saying... The loudest voice is... saying we should explore ai are the people who have the most to gain from it they are not vancouver rights they would not benefit the city we aren't even saying that we don't want data centers although i certainly do not we are simply saying to give it measured consideration that is the way of rational people we your constituents know that you are rational people so counselors i urge you to support motion 5 and put serious thought into if this data center will be a contributor to our community i urge you not to oppose it you're better than that thank you okay speaker 11 suki sahota Thank you, Chair. I support Motion 5, addressing the risks of digital infrastructure. Artificial intelligence offers enormous opportunities, but the infrastructure powering it is not impact-free. Hyperscale data centers require significant electricity, water, and cooling, generate continuous noise and waste heat, and occupy scarce industrial land while creating relatively few permanent jobs. This motion is not anti-technology or anti-investment. It is about ensuring innovation proceeds responsibly and in the public interest. It proposes a third-party public impact assessment covering water use, emissions, noise, heat recovery, and employment impacts, and asks whether facilities align with Vancouver's climate targets and should publicly report their ongoing impacts. These questions matter because British Columbia does not currently have a single comprehensive framework applying these standards consistently across community parties. While the province regulates aspects like electricity, safety, and environmental protection, there is no unified public interest test for whether a data center is an appropriate use of local resources. We have seen similar concerns before. In 2022, the province paused new electrical service for cryptocurrency mining due to concerns about allocating large amounts of clean electricity to an energy-intensive industry with limited economic return. Our identity centers raise many of the same issues, along with additional concerns about cooling, water use, and neighborhood impacts. However, Vancouver cannot address this alone. Without a consistent provincial framework, developers may shift projects to municipalities with weaker requirements, creating a race to the bottom. No community should feel pressured to lower standards to compete for projects that affect shared provincial resources like the electricity grid. I encourage Council to adopt this motion and also request that the province establish a comprehensive framework for major data centers across British Columbia. Such a framework should set consistent minimum standards for energy and water use, emissions, noise, public reporting, grid impacts, and community benefits, while allowing municipalities to adopt stronger protections where needed. Vancouver should lead, but not stand alone. A province-wide approach would provide certainty for industry, fairness for municipalities, and protection for residents and shared resources. For these reasons, I support the motion. Thank you.

Statement Watch

I live in the city of Vancouver, and I support this motion addressing the risk of digital infrastructure, and I am in favor of a full moratorium. But I do live next door in Burnaby, and these data centers are not only going to affect the lives of those nearest to the build sites. The effects of these centers are going to ripple out to all of us as well. The environmental impact alone should be enough to justify a moratorium. Provincial electric grids in most parts of Canada include a lot of fossil gas already, and we're lagging when it comes to building new renewable energy resources. Whenever we add a new load to the grid, we and wind projects from decarbonizing our energy system overall. We're only compensating for new projects rather than cleaning up the existing energy system that powers the rest of us. AI data center demand is also being used to support the creation of new fossil power plants and delay the retirement of old ones. This will directly affect the amount of pollution we produce and our power bills. In the U.S., in markets with heavy data center growth, customers saw their monthly bills go up as much as double digits. Ensuring Canadians' data sovereignty is quickly becoming the go-to justification for the data center build-out. Bell Canada describes its planned series of data centers as part of a sovereign AI fabric, while Telus deems its Quebec data centers as Canada's first sovereign AI factory. Just because it's on Canadian soil doesn't mean it's sovereign. Bell's proposed AI Fabric Data Center in Regina has been described by provincial governments as positioning Saskatchewan as a national leader in sovereign AI infrastructure. However, the facilities to identify tenants and owners of the facilities' means of compute are U.S.-based CoreWeave and Cerebras, both of whom would be subject to the U.S. Cloud Act. We cannot let the promises of some tech companies compromise our dedication to preserving Canadian nature and protecting Canadian citizens and their quality of life. Let us build the infrastructure that Canadians need. Affordable housing, green energy production, and libraries. Companies building data centers of this scale have money and lawyers to find every regulatory loophole and will abuse them for their profits at our detriment. According to Floodlight, at least 38 centers in Texas are using such regulatory loopholes to gain permits for on-site power sources representing northwards of 2,000 backup diesel generators and yearly emissions of 2,500 tons of nitrogen oxides, which are highly toxic gases. Please support this motion and pass a full moratorium on current and all future data center projects until we know the real risks involved here. Thank you very much.

Statement Watch

Hi, City Councillors and Mayor. My name is Pearl Wong and I am a resident of Vancouver. I am here today in support of Motion 5. We are learning in real time the negative impact of a hyperscale data center. Polluted drinking water, constant low frequency noise that cause headaches and other health problems, and dead bees that harm our crops and therefore our food supply. These are only a few of the problems that hyperscale data centers have introduced to communities in the United States. It's only right that we learn from other people's mistakes and plan for and implement safeguards that will preserve our right to quiet enjoyment, our limited drinking water, and our electrical grid. I want us to keep Vancouver and other cities and towns in our province a pleasant place to live. Data centers operate 24-7. They don't produce or provide anything of real necessity to our communities. And I'm speaking as a software engineer. I know better than most people how data centers are used today. I know for a fact that we don't need these centers to improve the security of national data, the quality of internet search results, or anything that actually provides important things for regular people to live and thrive in real life. If anything, we are all seeing how these centers continually extract public resources from towns and residents. Since we're in a water shortage, Like most people, I am also very concerned by our city and province's prioritization of this limited resource. The water also powers our electrical grid. With record low rainfalls in our area, we should all be doing more to conserve water and build projects that Vancouverites actually need, like keeping our green climate goals, social housing, updating community centers, and increasing our support for local arts and culture. Just a few highlights from the capital plan survey results. It is our responsibility and the Council's responsibility to fully understand impacts for everyday people before signing off to build a mega warehouse of computer servers. Please support this motion. Thank you.

Statement Watch

Hi there. My name is Rachel, and I'm a community member that volunteers in Vancouver. I'm calling today to speak and support Emotion 5 when I learn about how AI data centers are going to be built through the advocacy group No AI Vancouver. Through investigative journalism, such as the TAI, your research has shown that the effects and impacts of AI data centers and AI factories have been not clearly addressed. When a public consultation was held in 2023, a majority of the people from Vancouver were not aware of the TELUS AI Center project, the one at 150 West Georgia Street. Until now, with advocacy groups like No Way at Vancouver leading protests about it each month. In support of Councillor Maloney's motion, the need to measure quantifiable and qualitative assessments on the quality of life the AI Center will impact, diesel usage in a mixed-use neighborhood, the strain the AI Center will have on our electricity grid, and especially our water usage, is very important. Other cities in B.C. will see Vancouver as a leader, so it's significantly, again, important for Vancouver to position itself as a climate-just city and leader. This motion is a step forward in proceeding with caution with a trending industry. When in doubt, slow down. I strongly urge Council to support this motion without any amendments that undermine the need of strong regulations. Thank you.

Statement Watch

Good afternoon, Council. My name is Caitlin Stockwell. I'm a Vancouver resident, climate advocate, and lawyer who has worked on both provincial and Indigenous-led environmental assessment policies. The emergence of AI data centers in cities, and in particular, hyperscale data centers with high energy needs, pose new potential risks that need to be properly assessed and weighed. That's why I'm speaking in support of this common sense proactive motion to require a new public impact assessment before council decisions are made on proposed AI data centers. This is not a moment that calls for a let's wait and see approach, but instead requires regulators to understand and proactively plan to ensure future decisions are made in the public interest. This motion helps support informed decision-making, ensures Vancouverites will have answers to important questions about the environmental, social, and economic impacts of data centers proposed in their neighborhoods, and provides accountability for any commitments made by data center proponents to water and power consumption levels. Critically, this motion will also require staff to report back on means for assessing whether any data center development applications are consistent with the city's climate targets. These targets are promises that have been made to Vancouverites for our collective current and future health. As would be required by this motion if it passes, the onus must be on AI data center proponents to actually demonstrate that their proposal will generate local benefits that outweigh harms and that they can appropriately mitigate and manage environmental impacts. Importantly, this motion further provides a pathway for ensuring that projected benefits of AI data centers such as jobs, contributions to the local economy, and community investment, are assessed as compared to other viable industrial uses for the land as a reference point. It also helps ensure that proponents are on the hook for providing community contributions, commensurate with the significant wealth these centers generate for private investors. As is standard for impact assessment processes in Canada, impact monitoring should not end at the point of approval. As proposed by this motion, if a data centre was approved after a robust impact assessment process, the City needs to ensure that any commitments made by AI data centre proponents, including on water and power consumption, are monitored through public disclosure and enforced. As more information is learned about AI data centers, this can be used to inform the questions asked by and the requirements of the proposed public impact assessment. In summary, this motion proposes a thoughtful path forward for regulating and dealing with the risks and uncertainties of AI data centers as the city anticipates a growth in AI data center development applications. This motion doesn't prejudge the outcome of future applications. It simply ensures council and the public have the information necessary to make informed decisions in the interest of the city's climate targets and environmental goals, community health, and economic interests. I want to thank Councillor Maloney for bringing forward this proactive motion, and I hope Council will vote in support. Thank you.

Statement Watch

three-year resident of Vancouver, and I'm speaking today in support of Councillor Maloney's motion. In connection with the data centre public impact requirement and associated enforcement mechanisms, including a potential data centre-specific business licence proposed by this motion, I urge council and staff to investigate the appropriateness of the land use category under which AI data centres are currently zoned. Several AI projects scheduled for development in Vancouver have been classed as bulk data storage. This includes the TELUS hyperscale sites at 150 West Georgia, 111 East 5th, and the CoLogix co-location center at 3448 Cornette Road. This land use classification is inappropriate for two main reasons. One, AI data centers are fundamentally not storage facilities. The city's current zoning and development bylaws defines bulk data storage as the use of a wholly enclosed building for the storage of information on operating data servers. Bulk data storage is a subtype of the land use category transportation and storage uses. This includes other miscellaneous things such as cold storage plants, grain elevators, mini storage warehouses, packaging plants, etc. However, the activity of AI data centers is in no way analogous to these other uses permitted in this category. The function of AI data centers is to process vast amounts of data and produce novel outputs on-site using particular kinds of energy-intensive processing units to do so. On the contrary, none of the other types of facilities permitted under this category has as their primary function processing or production. Secondly, inaccurately classifying AI data centers as bulk data storage creates public misunderstanding and has the potential to unfairly limit informed participation in Vancouver's zoning and permitting processes. Use of the term storage to describe the primary function of these facilities implies that they are relatively low intensity and that on-site activity poses little risk of harm to the surrounding area. In contrast, AI data centers are high intensity, high energy demand facilities that require continuous operation and have been associated with a number of negative outcomes as we've heard from many previous speakers today. Vancouver residents deserve to have developments that are, sorry, the developments constructed in the city to be properly named and described in order for us to have the best opportunity to democratically engage in the city zoning processes. Therefore, I would like to request that the city review the classification of all bulk data storage facilities and bring them before a public hearing and also encourages the development of a new set of classifications related to AI storage centers in particular and data centers.

Statement Watch

Hello, Council. Thank you for listening to us and having us here today. I am here in support of Councillor Maloney's motion, and I'd like to thank her for bringing it to the floor here. And I'm also going to invoke the classic refrain that I believe it does not go far enough yet at the end of the day. We're advocating for direct democracy in an issue that people care a lot about and that people are paying attention to. And I can do nothing but support that while also calling for a moratorium on these data centers. The reason that I'm here to do that is, well, I could talk about the heat radius that's been shown around them. We could talk about the effects on cognitive decay. We could talk about the effects on kids in schools. We could talk about... what it's doing to the environment, what it's doing to labor, what it's doing to jobs. I can't even thoroughly complete this list of all the concerns. Surveillance, that's another one. All of which people are paying attention to across the political spectrum. And the reason that I know that is not just because I spend way too much time on the internet, is because I am one of the co-organizers of the No AI protest movement that you... may have seen us on the street in front of there before. We've had about 500 people come out to our first event. We had about 1,000 come out to our second, and I hope to see more on our third on July 26th at 1 p.m. in front of the art gallery. And in those meetings, people have come up to me from across the political spectrum and said, hey, I don't think I normally would agree or identify with you on very much, but I agree with everything you said while we were talking, while we were listening, relaying their concerns. So the message I have for council is really not on terms of policy or procedure, which you know better than I do. not in terms of the issues, which I'm sure you also know better than I do, I would like to discourage you from normalcy bias, whatever it is, the momentum that you're used to seeing on this floor, especially in regards to this issue. People are paying attention. They are waking up. They are participating in democracy and making sure their voices are heard in ways they haven't before. So if nothing else, I would encourage, for the sake of what happens in the next election, people will pay attention. I can't imagine the amount of pressure that you're getting behind the scenes from the other side of this issue. And I know that the provincial and federal government are also pretty keen on these data centers as well. And so that is pretty scary to try to consider bucking that or going against that. And maybe you don't even have the power to do so. And maybe that's true. But still, I would say make them hold the bag. Be clear about your position and make them overrule you. People will see that, and we will remember that when we are in the ballot box. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Statement Watch

can you hear me okay yes we can please go ahead okay great um hi my name is erica miles i'm a resident of vancouver in the mount pleasant area and i'm calling in support of motion five i live about a block away from the proposed data center at 111 east fifth avenue the building i live in consists of 145 rental homes all of which are either housing income limit units or lower end of the market housing Many of the residents are young families or people with disabilities, including myself. And that is just one building out of many in the area filled with families and young working professionals. In addition to many businesses, shops and restaurants that make Mount Pleasant such a vibrant community and place a great place to live. I'm very concerned about the potential impacts of hyperscale AI data center being built in the neighborhood. Reports have shown that hyperscale data centers have a very negative effect on the environment. They use an incredible amount of water to cool the machines, and we're already in stage three water restrictions, and it's only the beginning of the summer. Even centers that use a closed-loop system eventually deflesh the systems to prevent buildup and can leach harmful chemicals and contaminants into the water supply. There have been reports that the constant noise from the hyperscale data centers have negatively affected nearby residents, giving them headaches and keeping people from being able to sleep at night. They've also been shown to create heat islands with the constant need to run cooling systems that place an enormous strain on the electrical grid. I live in a building without built-in air conditioning, and the summers are already incredibly challenging with the rising temperatures, and having additional heat added onto that from a nearby data center would have a terrible effect on my community. In addition to living nearby the proposed site, I also work in the animation industry and have worked in the Mount Pleasant area for the past 10 years, also just blocks away from the proposed site. Generative AI has been incredibly harmful to my industry and has threatened the livelihood of many people working in animation and film. It has been largely unregulated, both in the way that many of the large learning models have been trained off of scraped and stolen work from artists like myself and my colleagues, and also in the building of the data centers where they are housed. The AI industry as it is currently run mainly benefits tech companies and billionaires while taking jobs from people in the communities and providing little additional benefit. I urge the council to slow down and put a pause on rushing the approval of all of the data centers and AI infrastructure before they can properly assess the impact they will have on the community around them and create adequate regulations to protect the people of the city. I strongly support the motion to follow the report recommendations and make sure that the proposed data centers would not cause harm to the surrounding communities before any of the permitting is approved. And thank you for your time.

Statement Watch

awesome uh good afternoon counselors uh mayor sim uh thank you for taking time in your busy schedules to hear from your constituents and enact their wishes my name is phelan times mcdonald and i am a resident of vancouver i'm calling in today to speak in support of the motion to explore developing a data center public impact requirement as well as other measures to ensure that data centers specifically artificial intelligence data centers do not harm the communities they intend to support I'm a professional journalist and an editor who has spent the past three years covering Canadian technology policy for a national news outlet. The research is clear. AI data centers are resource-intensive warehouses that require energy, water, real estate, and many other essentials that are also needed by city residents. I understand, especially as city councillors, the appeal of a, quote, world's most powerful and sustainable AI infrastructure, as well as particularly with our country's push for, quote, sovereign AI solutions. However, there's nothing requiring these centers to abide by any of those claims. Proponents have touted their closed-loop liquid cooling systems, which they say will consume 90% less water than traditional data centers. While they appreciate their supposed concern for water use, this claim is deliberately misleading. Using outdated comparison data center models that are so old, they're effectively ancient. proponents' claims don't address are the increased energy use that such cooling systems need. The fact that EC Hydro's own chief regulatory officer declared that the province's utilities company is facing a significant power shortage within the next four years, so significant that it's considering undermining the province's climate regulations. along with a number of other issues um as counselor kirby young stated during the first motion uh earlier in this committee meeting this motion is exploratory and if these data centers will be truly beneficial to the city of vancouver then there should be no issue uh you know considering rules to implement rules that they might need to abide by good proposals are not afraid of good rules Good companies are rewarded by such good rules. They get an enduring market advantage against sloppy vendors who might be happy to cut corners. Good investments also prefer stable regulatory environments. Right now, we're in the Wild West when it comes to AI data centers, and that's not an environment for stable investment. This motion could lead to us fixing that. I urge you all to vote in support of it. Thank you.

Statement Watch

My name is Eddie Padrera. I'm the president of the Canadian Animation Guild, Local 938 of the International Alliance of Theatre and Stage Employees. I'm not a Vancouver resident, so I'm speaking today in my capacity as president of my union, and I rise in support of this motion. Our union represents around 1,400 animation VFX and digital arts workers in the Lower Mainland. the bulk of which live and work here in Vancouver. Our members interact with fairly advanced and specialized commercial software, and they're no strangers to tech change. Though many of our members are directly employed as artists, our sector also includes a significant number of production technology specialists who, in very general terms, are tasked with taking the newest advances in computing technology and adapting them to fit the needs of a production pipeline. So it's from this position that I feel quite confident in saying that our members do not oppose this current cycle of data center investment out of fear or from alarmist sentiment. These are folks that are quite used to new tech. On the contrary, we oppose it because we are seeing a drive from industry and government to direct a lot of resources onto technology that has not proven itself at an industrial scale. the largest firms behind the development of artificial intelligence are still working on use cases, and we should not mistake marketing for proof of viability. When it comes to generative AI, for instance, there's a lot of flashy stuff on the market, but our folks who provide that service work to Disney, to Netflix, to all the big giants, we have not seen these tools deliver on a lot of their promises. And in terms of job creation as well, we see a lot of figures from TELUS and from the federal government around, you know, the job creation figures around this. And we find that the bulk of these jobs that could be created are temporary jobs in construction. Now, as a union rep, I got a lot of buddies in the building trades, and I guarantee you these folks would be just as happy building homes. They'd be just as happy building hospitals and schools. In terms of permanent employment, the job creation of projects like... projects like this tend to be quite small. So with all this in mind, I do not believe it would be wise to fast-track developments that will come with a heavy burden on our electricity infrastructure when those developments cannot promise economic or job growth to offset those burdens. Whether those investments continue is beyond the scope of this motion, so I only ask that as those developments go forward, the material needs of Vancouverites are taken into consideration. By passing this motion, City Council will be sending a strong message to the workers of the city that Yes, Vancouver is a world-class center for technological innovation, but this innovation will never come at the expense of its workers, health, safety, or livelihood. I think this is not a maximalist motion. I think it's not radical. I think it's simply good governance. Thank you.

Statement Watch

My name is Cordy Matsumoto. I'm a Surrey resident, but I've lived in East Van and New West. I'm disabled, and I'm part of core staff in a non-profit social club that brings together tech workers, 2SLGBTQIA, and all sorts of diverse people as young as 10 and as old as 45 over shared hobbies, creating and maintaining a safe, accessible, local community space. The vast majority, if not all of them, are eagerly waiting for the AI bubble to burst. Every day, another shared experience about AI causing problems from top to bottom of company structures, from indie studios to multinational corporations. Eroding user trust, demoralizing employees, we can no longer trust whether anyone is truly communicating. is substantially widening holes in hiring processes and career paths. Holes that require hiring back the humans AI promised it will replace. Forcing companies to spend far more money rehiring and retraining for jobs that have been restructured to value their experience less and pay them less for it. The government of Canada warns us against cryptocurrency scams, yet buys deep into its political sphere of influence with decisions like this proposed data center. We pretend libraries are relics of an earlier time, even as it bursts at the seams with new, original thought, while AI guzzles our dwindling drinking water and regurgitates the reading material we've already created sustainably and responsibly. What... is AI truly responsible for? What can AI truly be held accountable for? It is a lose-lose gambit for our communities, for our local companies, and a win-win for world powers looking to kick the legs out of our infrastructure and pressure Canada to pay out the nose for private companies looking to profit off of Canada's resources. To sum it up, generative AI and AI data centers as a whole come at a massive loss of profit and morale for wherever hosts them. It is unwanted by the people. It is an unnecessary liability disguised as a profitable investment. I cannot emphasize enough how it undermines our jobs, our societal progress. It is an inefficient use of our most strained resources, and it is easily exploitable. It is simply a scam. I'm begging everyone here to pass Motion 5. Thank you.

Statement Watch

Thank you. Hello, councillors. Thank you so much for your time and listening today. I'm speaking in support of Motion 5. I'm a resident of Vancouver, living close to BC Place and the location of the Plan New AI Data Center site. I am concerned about the effects data centers will create on the quality of life for local residents and its environmental impact. I'm concerned about the rise of costs of electricity in order to sustain the energy demands of the data centers. I'm concerned about the noise pollution that will be right outside my home, which is linked to increased stress and anxiety, elevated heart rate, hypertension, immune issues, reduced sleep, reduced cognitive ability, and much more. As an example, on a microscopic scale, Data centers produce artificial EMF fields that researchers say disrupt the magnetic navigation systems that bees rely on, causing reductions on colony size and breeding. But on a human level, EMFs are linked to childhood leukemia, nervous system tumors, brain cancer, breast cancer, Alzheimer's, cognitive dysfunction, miscarriage, DNA and cell damage, and more. Data centers can raise the local daily temperature by an average of 3.6 degrees and increases the risk of local fires. There are numerous examples in the communities in the U.S. that have suffered from introducing data centers into their environment. Many testimonials that I don't have the time to speak on today, but I would appreciate this council to consider how data centers may not fit into the current zoning that it is in now. At the very least, It should be in a voting category of its own. The impacts of these centers on residents should be carefully considered, and strict regulation should be put in place before any movement to building is taken. On a macroscopic level, AI does not create jobs. It takes jobs away from citizens and supports the growth of technology billionaires. As an artist myself, I'm highly aware of how AI feels real artists work without their consent. No one needs generative AI, especially given the harms on people and the environment. Thank you for listening to me today, and I urge you to support Motion 5. Thank you.

Statement Watch

Wonderful, thank you. My name is Garrick. I'm a resident of Vancouver and I'm also a software developer and designer by trade. I support motion 5 and I would further urge Council to impose a moratorium on hyperscale data centers until the regulations described by the motion are set in place. Hyperscale data centers are materially different from the offices and other industries accounted for under light industrial zoning, as previous speakers have indicated. Critically, we know that they're hugely energy intensive, at least 10 times more so than traditional data centers that they're often confused with. This energy intensity has important downstream effects on the grid, effects which are not regulated. We have no firm guarantees that energy costs will not increase as BC Hydro faces increased grid strain over the next years. And further, we know from cases in the United States that hyperscale AI data centers are closely associated with increased disruptions to electrical harmonics, which can damage electrical hardware and infrastructure in the local area. There's currently no real regulatory environment around hyperscale data centers, and I don't support corporate lawlessness. The developers and managers of hyperscale data centers should be held to high standards of transparency so the community can judge these novel projects in an informed way. They should be held accountable for promises about resource use and local impact with penalties if they break those promises. And they should be subject to democratic oversight and consent in their ongoing operation. Furthermore, AI data centers represent a poor use of very limited public space in the city of Vancouver. Vancouver is in critical need of housing, healthcare, and accessible community spaces. But these data centers create few permanent jobs and no local amenities. They're a missed opportunity to build things we actually need. They're dead weight in the heart of our home. Finally, in many ways, the construction of these data centers is an affront to the dignity of a lot of Vancouver's critical cultural and economic sectors. I've attended the protests, and in speaking to protesters, it's clear that beyond the data centers themselves, many Vancouverites feel these projects are a symbol of a much larger imposition of generative AI by the Liberal government and the North American tech industry, primarily geared to bolster and protect the investments of a few large American tech companies. They don't feel excited when the government says that AI is an inevitable part of their lives or schools or neighborhoods. They feel assaulted. And that feeling will persist into the October elections. I would urge council to exercise leadership and put an end to corporate lawlessness. Show us that the human beings who live in Vancouver matter more to you than the lobbyists and business interests who see our home as just another opportunity to grow their investment portfolio. Please support motion five.