VIDEO: Tensions flare as RM of Sherwood moves ahead with data centre agreement

A data centre project in the Rural Municipality of Sherwood is moving forward, following a raucous council meeting which saw people ejected from the gallery, protesters banging on windows and most of the public locked out during the discussion.

Construction on the 300-megawatt Bell Canada AI data centre project just outside of Regina is expected to begin later this spring. The project will be the largest purpose-built AI data centre development in Canada, and is expected to generate as much as $12 billion in economic value for the province through job creation, tax revenue and broader economic benefits.

Read more:

• Bell Canada, Saskatchewan government partner on data centre project outside Regina
• Water, power, noise: Experts weigh in on Sask. data centre concerns
• What is a data centre? Expert explains amid Regina debate

“We’re quite confident that we make the right decision,” Ray Orb, the municipality’s interim reeve, told reporters after the meeting.

“We had a contingency today of local ratepayers, and they were actually very happy. Most of their concerns were incorporated within the agreement itself.

Orb said there were only two outstanding concerns about the agreement with Bell around the centre, which were related to water quality and noise. He said a Bell representative told landowners those issues would be addressed in the agreement.

“Those are the only two things that they were concerned about,” Orb said. “In the end, they agreed with all the rest, so why wouldn’t we go ahead?”

A portion of that discussion went unheard on a livestream of the meeting. The Microsoft Teams feed was organized due to concerns the small council chamber at the new RM office on Campbell Street in Regina could not handle the crowd expected to attend the meeting, but the stream began without any audio, much to the frustration of members of the public who were locked out of the meeting itself by security.

Orb later said issues related to SaskTel were likely behind the difficulties with the online stream.

At the same time, some people in the gallery who asked to speak at the meeting but did not appear on the delegations list were denied permission. One was removed from the chamber, while another was asked to leave later in the meeting.

Demonstrators protest outside

Before the meeting started, a group of at least 60 people chanted and waved signs outside, expressing their concerns about the data centre project and artificial intelligence in general.

Janna Pratt, a member of the George Gordon First Nation, said the community has not been properly consulted about the project.

“I believe that the duty to consult is the mechanism to address a lot of these concerns,” Pratt said before the meeting, adding that the First Nation’s land code requires community consultation for matters around land use.

Pratt said the duty to consult sets a high standard, which she feels has not been met.

“It’s not going to be our politicians and our provincial party that’s going to have to deal with the fallout of this decision,” said Koby Schwab, one of the organizers of the protest.

“It is going to be the people of this province. And so honestly, left or right, this doesn’t really seem like that kind of issue to me. This really does feel like an up-versus-down issue.”

As the council meeting continued, some of the protesters could be heard banging on the windows. A Regina Police Service cruiser was parked on Campbell Street during the meeting.

Orb later suggested security at the meeting could have been better.

“When people start interfering with the council meeting, with the municipal meeting, I think that’s actually an infraction on the law,” he said.

“People are allowed to protest, but they should have been allocated to a different site. They shouldn’t have been around the building, because they were bothering us.”

Orb said he personally struggled to hear parts of the meeting due to the protest, calling the situation “very, very unsettling.”

Interim reeve not concerned about appointed members voting

Orb, along with three of the six members of the RM’s council, were appointed by the provincial government just a week earlier, after four resignations in March left the council without enough members to reach its quorum. But Orb said he doesn’t feel that the appointments created any conflicts.

“We don’t always agree with what the province is doing. We don’t always agree what the opposition is doing,” he said.

“But we work with the government that we have in power as best we can. In the Municipalities Act, there is provision to appoint, and the minister used his discretion to do that, and I think, together, we can make the best of this and be successful at what we do.”

Orb, who previously led the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM), said he hopes to use that experience to help improve the RM’s communication with the public.

“When I was involved with SARM, we had a very good communications program and very good staff working through communications, and I think that’s important we get that message out there,” he said.

“This is a positive project. Whether people like AI or not, they’re probably already using it. It’s in our lives right now, especially in agriculture and health care and the work that municipalities do.”

He said the project is an important one, for both the RM and Saskatchewan as a whole.

“We have a good opportunity here to build something, and to us, it’s a success story for the province,” Orb said.

Orb said building permits will be issued and inspectors and engineers will soon be on the site conducting studies ahead of construction.