‘They shouldn’t be surprised’: Nova Scotians take stand against major data centre project

A group of Nova Scotians gathered on the waterfront in Halifax on Saturday with a message for Premier Tim Houston: allowing the construction of a large data centre will be detrimental to the environment and the community.

“These companies don’t have a lot of information that they’re able to give us, we don’t know what this is gonna look like, we already have wells that are drying up in the summertime. I don’t think we can afford to do this,” Megan Boudreau, one of the protest organizers, told Global News.

Energy and infrastructure company, EverWind, announced on Friday $10 billion in private investment in a data centre campus at its existing Point Tupper site. The site would be leased and run by AI development company Anthropic, the creator of the AI assistant Claude.

“Canadians are using Claude in growing numbers, and we want our infrastructure to be closer to the people who rely on it,” said Jacob Glick, head of Canada Public Policy with Anthropic.

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EverWind said its campus will begin with an initial 95-megawatt (MW) phase in late 2027. This will be followed by a 325-megawatt expansion targeted for 2028 subject to regulatory conditions.

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At full development, EverWind expects the campus to reach a capacity of 420 megawatts.

But the organizers of the weekend protest said the plans seemed to be “randomly announced.” They are now trying to raise awareness about the harms that data centres may cause.

“They tell us AI will take our water and our power and our jobs and our art, and maybe will kill us all. And they shouldn’t be surprised that we’re upset and standing up here today after knowing these things,” Boudreau said.

On Friday, Houston said the opportunity has been discussed for about a month and it will help Canada build its computing power.

“The data we use every day in our healthcare system, for all our banking needs, for everything on our phones. Business is run on data, government runs on it. We need more secure infrastructure, more secure data infrastructure,” he said.

EverWind CEO Trent Vichie said the data centre will also create up to 2,000 jobs during construction, followed by 215 operating jobs.

Protest organizers say these numbers are misleading to Canadians.

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“There’s not going to be the CEO coming from Nova Scotia. They’re going to be coming from Anthropic. We know it’s Anthropic that is going to take over this company or this AI center and we simply cannot just be continuing to throw our money back at the Americans,” co-organizer Ashley Drodge told Global News.

Glick said Canada has set a “high bar” for responsible data centre development, but one Port Hawkesbury resident is concerned what the development may do to the town’s water supply.

“The water source that the data centre is drawing from is Landry Lake, and that is the Port Hawkesbury town water source, that’s our drinking water, that is our shower water, that’s our cleaning water, and quite frankly I just don’t think that’s alright,” Aidan Pottie told Global News while holding a sign reading “you can’t drink data.”

Port Hawkesbury is less than a kilometre outside of Point Tupper, where the data centre is to be built.

Pottie said he feels the whole process has been hidden from the residents.

“A few weeks ago there was a conference in Port Hawkesbury with EverWind, that said ‘I was in talks, there’ll be more information’ and yadda yadda, and as we saw yesterday on the news, clearly this has been in the works for months,” he said.

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While the deal is signed, the residents say they won’t stop fighting.

Boudreau and Drodge said they are planning a province-wide protest for Nov. 7.

– With files from Global News’ Rebecca Lau and David Murdock