Bell AI data centre in Sask. expanding, set to bring in over $50B in investment

Bell is quadrupling a previously announced data centre project in Saskatchewan that is expected to bring in more than $50 billion in capital investment.

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 Monday at an event 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.

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.”

“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?”

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 trying to sell them on putting their money toward projects in multiple sectors, including energy, critical minerals and defence.