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<\/p>\nWhen a U.S. company made its data centre pitch to some concerned Saint John residents late last year, he called the city an untapped \u201cgold mine\u201d for artificial intelligence projects. <\/p>\n
The heads of Saint John Industrial Parks and the Fibre Centre in Moncton used similar terms, describing the city as a \u201chidden gem\u201d and \u201chidden secret\u201d for AI.<\/p>\n
WATCH | Former premier Frank McKenna considers rich legacy of NBTel :<\/p>\n
Some see Saint John as hidden gem for data centres<\/p>\n
VoltaGrid and Beacon AI Centres want to bring a data centre to Saint John because of its fibre system. Former premier Frank McKenna says this dark fibre infrastructure comes from innovations made decades ago by former telephone company NBTel. <\/p>\n
Businessman and former premier Frank McKenna agrees and credits the \u201chistorical relationship\u201d between the provincial government and NBTel before the Saint John-based telephone company merged into Bell Aliant in 1999. <\/p>\n
The company’s legacy, according to McKenna, includes a province rich in unused fibre-optic cable, called dark fibre. Dark fibre can be used to transmit data at high speeds, so it’s a resource and an opportunity for the city and New Brunswick as a whole. <\/p>\n
Some sources, such as a provincial government report from 2012, praise NBTel for its telecommunication milestones.<\/p>\n
The report called NBTel the first Canadian telephone company to provide internet services and the first granted permission by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to provide television services.<\/p>\n
\u201cNBTel was extraordinarily progressive in terms of wiring New Brunswick and of making sure that we had ample amounts of dark fibre available for whatever use came along,\u201d McKenna said in an interview about the data centre proposed for Saint John.<\/p>\n
![\"Man,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768482429_27_default.jpg\")
Frank McKenna said NBTel left New Brunswick with a rich resource, and the province should take advantage of it. (Nipun Tiwari\/CBC)<\/p>\n
He said the result of the company\u2019s foresight is that New Brunswick now has an \u201cextraordinary resource\u201d for creating data centres.<\/p>\n
In October, Nathan Ough, CEO of Texas-based VoltaGrid, announced that his company and a partner, Canada-based Beacon AI Centers. would be developing a data centre in the expanded Spruce Lake Industrial Park.<\/p>\n
Residents of nearby Lorneville have opposed both this proposal<\/a> and the approved expansion<\/a> that came before it.<\/p>\n One of the main questions at a November information session held by VoltaGrid: Why build this in Lorneville? <\/p>\n Ough, who is from Saint John, cited his own personal connection to the city. <\/p>\n He also said the city and New Brunswick’s history and resources make it valuable for projects like one.<\/p>\n Not so secret now<\/p>\n This “gem” or “secret” isn’t quite so hidden, with even federal Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon briefly mentioning Saint John’s large amount of dark fibre during a visit to the city this week.<\/p>\n McKenna, who was premier during the last decade of the 20th century, said New Brunswick’s \u201clead\u201d in technology has slipped over the years, but he believes the city and province should take advantage of a great asset. <\/p>\n Ian MacKinnon, head of Saint John Industrial Parks, said dark fibre has been one of the main selling points as the city tries to attract businesses.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the measures that companies look at is the round-trip time for [data] to go from here to Boston, Halifax, or Montreal,” he said. “And our round-trip times from the network infrastructure that’s already built in this area are significantly low.”<\/p>\n While the resource has piqued interest, MacKinnon said he couldn’t speculate about other potential companies moving forward with projects. The VoltaGrid and Beacon AI Centers data centre is the only one confirmed. <\/p>\n Footprint, AI bubble worry Green leader <\/p>\n Green Party Leader David Coon, who is critical of the project, said Saint John is not the only city with the dark-fibre resource. Other cities, including Calgary, Toronto and Edmonton, have it too, he said.<\/p>\n Uri Litvenenko, CEO of the Fibre Centre in Moncton, said the province is set apart from other jurisdictions because of markets being saturated in places that also have fibre system availability and lower costs. Infrastructure also makes a difference.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Fibre Centre is what’s called a \u201ccarrier hotel,” which connects governments and businesses to a global data highway.<\/p>\n While New Brunswick had an advanced fibre system, Litvenenko said, it didn\u2019t always have an \u201con-ramp\u201d to this global data \u201chighway,\u201d This is infrastructure that Toronto, for example, has had since the 1990s.<\/p>\n The Fibre Centre in Moncton opened in New Brunswick in 2015.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTraditionally, though, New Brunswick has not been perceived as a place where you can hop on the data highway, because [the ramp] just wasn’t there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Coon also has concerns about emissions and the data centre’s drain on energy. He also agrees with perspectives that say that the AI bubble is likely to burst.<\/p>\n \u201cI just don’t see that sustaining itself. It’s really a gold rush mentality we’ve got right now, and it’s not going to last,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The project has been promoted as having a lower environmental footprint. Ough has previously said the plan will be fuelled by an on-site, natural-gas generating system and will use a reactive catalyst to abate emissions.<\/p>\n Coon said that every tonne of carbon emissions makes a pressing climate crisis worse.<\/p>\n \u201cSo is this the kind of community development that the city is going to benefit from in any significant way?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cOr is it really just acting as a host for this American company to access our resources, which are cheaper and more plentiful than they are in the U.S.?\u201d<\/p>\n The VoltaGrid project needs to undergo an environmental impact assessment before moving forward but has not yet been registered for review.<\/p>\n McKenna said the province can\u2019t afford to do nothing with a deficit to tackle and changed Canada\u2013U.S. relations.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we’re going to need to wake up and smell the coffee,” he said. “We have a lot of challenges in front of us and we’re going to have to take advantage of every single opportunity that we have in front of us.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When a U.S. company made its data centre pitch to some concerned Saint John residents late last year,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-410948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Man](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768482429_679_default.jpg\")
Nathan Ough announced in October that VoltaGrid and Beacon AI Centers wanted to put a data centre in the expanded Spruce Lake Industrial Park. (Nipun Tiwari\/CBC)<\/p>\n![\"Man,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768482430_264_default.jpg\")
Green Party Leader David Coon said that Saint John is not the only city that has available dark fibre. (Radio-Canada)<\/p>\n