Bell AI data centre expansion in Sask. announced at investment summit

TORONTO — Bell Canada intends to quadruple the size of its planned data centre project in Saskatchewan, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced at Canada’s first-ever investment summit on Monday.

Carney said the project is expected to bring in more than $50 billion in capital investment, and amounts to the largest capital investment in Saskatchewan’s history.

“It is the largest sovereign AI infrastructure network in Canada,” Carney said at the announcement, which was also attended by former prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper.

The expansion will boost the capacity of the data centre to 1.2 gigawatts.

Bell CEO Mirko Bibic said at the event that when the initial 300 megawatt data centre was announced in March of this year, it was already the biggest data centre announced in Canada.

He said the construction of the project is underway. “We’ve got structural frames up for three buildings, foundations being poured for the fourth building, the work going on for the power and cooling infrastructure,” Bibic said.

In July, Meta announced a 1-gigawatt data center in Alberta.

The Saskatchewan government said in a press release 300 megawatts will be sourced from the provincial grid and the project “includes a phased development of up to 900 MW of additional capacity provided by Bell through Saskatchewan’s Bring Your Own Power principle.”

The release said the project will lead to up to 500 permanent jobs and an estimated 3,000 additional positions “in areas including security, logistics and maintenance.”

Moe said the project would also help provide for data sovereignty.

“More and more, the information Canadians depend on, our personal information, our financial information, commercial information, it is being stored in these centres,” Moe said Monday.

“So I would say, as Canadians, we have a choice. Do we build the infrastructure necessary to keep Canadian data in Canada? Or do we leave our data sovereignty in the hands of other countries?”

Carney said the government is working with tech companies from around the world to “develop additional gigawatts of data centers, additional hundred billions of investment.”

He added those projects have to be done with “the right values” and in partnership with municipalities.

A government document prepared last year for federal Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon said Canada had about 337 megawatts of AI data centre capacity, but projects accounting for another 20 gigawatts-plus — or 20,000 megawatts — were “under planning or development.”

But there has also been a massive backlash to data centres across the country, with some municipalities debating putting a halt to such projects. Oakville, Ont., passed a temporary moratorium in August.

Solomon recently announced new voluntary principles for building data centres in Canada.

It says data centres must “create lasting local benefits,” can’t shift electricity costs to Canadians, and must minimize water use and their impact on the environment. It also calls for transparency on local impacts and says data centres have to “bring strategic value to Canada.”

The Saskatchewan government release said the Bell project was approved under its data centre framework, also released in August. Those principles include “Canadian ownership, support for Canadian data and AI sovereignty, the creation of Saskatchewan jobs and partnerships, industry experience, self-supplied power generation, and a centralized provincial intake process,” it said in a release last month.

The Canada Investment Summit kicked off in Toronto on Monday, bringing in some of the world’s biggest asset managers and other major foreign investors, and trying to sell them on putting their money toward projects in multiple sectors, including energy, critical minerals and defence.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 14, 2026.

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press