That means the project that stirred local opposition \u2014 the Prologis two-storey data centre proposal in the Meadowvale Business Park along Tenth Line West \u2014 will also be caught by the pause, as the proposed facility has a peak energy demand of 40 megawatts, enough to power roughly 20,000 to 40,000 homes<\/a>.<\/p>\n In July, Prologis officials had warned that if the ICBL passes, the real estate firm would appeal the decision at the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT).\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI am happy as a taxpayer to contribute to a legal fight, to show leadership and to set a precedent for other municipalities to finally follow someone that has the spine to stand up against corporations that love to lobby and make a quick buck,\u201d Ward 8 councillor candidate Rahul Mehta said during the July council meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Pointer reached out to Prologis for comment but did not receive a response ahead of publication.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Three representatives from Prologis walked attendees through basic information about the proposed data centre at a Town Hall in June but residents felt key details that relate to their concerns were missing. (Anushka Yadav\/The Pointer)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The interim control bylaw gives the City up to one year, with the flexibility to extend the freeze for an additional year if necessary, to step back and examine whether current planning rules are equipped for facilities whose demands can extend far beyond the walls of the buildings themselves, ranging from electricity and water consumption to noise, heat, emissions, infrastructure capacity and potential impacts on public health and the environment\u2014concerns that residents had explicitly made clear during a public Town Hall meeting on June 25<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The comprehensive review will also consider the roles of the provincial and federal governments in regulating the sector.<\/p>\n Once the detailed study is complete, staff will bring recommendations to council to guide future planning policies and regulations for artificial intelligence and cloud computing along with the physical infrastructure required to power it, as mass-scale computational applications that require vast resources become more and more common in our rapidly advancing digital\/information economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Mississauga currently permits data centres in designated Employment Areas, the City’s zoning framework does not specifically define them; instead, they are classified under \u201cWarehousing, Distribution and Wholesaling or Science and Technology Facilities\u201d, rather than as dedicated AI infrastructure.<\/p>\n The scale of newer proposals has prompted the City to examine whether those classifications remain appropriate. Critics believe they are outdated, shaped long before the scale of current and future resource consumption for modern operations was properly understood.\u00a0<\/p>\n City staff clarified the bylaw would not apply to facilities that were \u201clegally existing\u201d prior to Wednesday\u2019s vote, or to projects that had \u201creceived building permits prior to the date of the ICBL,\u201d meaning those projects could be carved out of the one-year pause.<\/p>\n However, it prevents the conversion or enlargement of certain existing warehouse, distribution or science-and-technology facilities where computer systems and servers would push the resulting facility’s peak power demand to 10 megawatts or more.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is your win today,\u201d Damerla told residents.<\/p>\n \u201cYou guys sounded the alarm. You guys came forward. You guys advocated, and if there\u2019s an ICBL that passed today, and there\u2019s a moratorium on data centres, it\u2019s because of you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The September 16 interim control bylaw applies to all lands within Mississauga, restricting their use for \u201cMajor Digital Infrastructure Facilities\u201d while City staff reviews Official Plan policies and zoning regulations; it excludes the construction, conversion or enlargement of facilities with a total peak load power demand of less than 10 megawatts. (City of Mississauga)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n While many residents are \u201creally happy\u201d with council\u2019s latest move, Tavares reminded that the ICBL is \u201ca 12-month ticking time bomb\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAll we’ve done is push the goalposts back\u2026The people of Mississauga now have to do as much work as the council,\u201d he reminded.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe now have to reach out to all of the MPs and MPPs across Ontario to make sure that they start asking the right questions and try to push a better version of data centres in the city or in Ontario, or else, all we do is push it back a year, and we\u2019re still going to have data centres and the worst version of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Ward 10 Councillor Sue McFadden expressed disappointment that the province failed to deliver on its promise of outlining the \u201cguardrails\u201d for data centres by September 15.<\/p>\n \u201cBy putting in this interim control bylaw, hopefully, within the next few months, we will get that information and we can move forward with it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n On August 13, following months of public outcry and pressure from municipalities, the Doug Ford PC government released its Data Centre Playbook to fill the gap in provincial and municipal planning frameworks built long before artificial intelligence and the unprecedented demands hyperscale computing would place on water, energy and public infrastructure.<\/a><\/p>\n The province proposed data centres cover the full costs of their electricity use and any generation or transmission upgrades they require rather than shifting those costs onto other ratepayers. It also supported technologies like closed-loop and waterless cooling, noise-reduction measures and waste-heat recovery to reduce unwanted impacts.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Ontario has a choice: we can build the economy of the future and ensure Canadians\u2019 data remains in Canada, or we can get left behind and risk Canadians\u2019 data being sent to the U.S. and elsewhere,\u201d Premier Doug Ford said on August 13 as he unveiled the province\u2019s Data Centre Playbook. (Doug Ford\/X)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n While a \u201cstep in the right direction\u201d, critics identified \u201chuge gaps\u201d in the playbook regarding transparency, public oversight, and environmental protection that leave Ontarians vulnerable to rising energy costs and uncoordinated development.<\/p>\n Shion Guha, a University of Toronto professor and public-interest technologist who studies AI governance, viewed the guidance, which lacked details or enforcement, as a \u201cmissed opportunity\u201d feeding into a \u201cvicious cycle\u201d of reactive governance.<\/p>\n The Ford government did not address Indigenous consultation or provide a clear timeline for turning the Playbook into legislation, leaving the long list of questions that prompted municipalities to impose their own moratoriums unresolved.<\/p>\n A recent Leger poll<\/a> shows a deep divide among Ontarians\u2019 support for AI data centres in the province: 44 percent supported the development of data centres used for artificial intelligence in Ontario while 43 percent were in opposition.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Across Canada, two concerns remain top of mind when it comes to potential impacts of data centres: higher household electricity bills, cited by 81 percent of respondents, and environmental impacts such as electricity and water use and greenhouse gas emissions cited by 79 percent.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCanadians generally recognize the potential value of investing in AI infrastructure\u2026Opinions become more divided when development is proposed within respondents\u2019 own province. Nationally, 44 percent support AI data centres in their province, while 42 percent oppose them,\u201d a new Leger poll found. (Leger)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n On September 3, Ottawa released its own AI framework, titled \u2018Canada\u2019s Responsible Data Centre Development Principles\u2019<\/a>, which set out five expectations namely: projects create lasting local benefits, avoid shifting electricity costs onto Canadians, minimize water use and environmental impacts, be transparent about local impacts and provide strategic value to Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Bell Canada, Cohere, eStruxture, Hypertec, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Telus are among the companies listed as signatories that support the principles.<\/p>\n However, much like Ford\u2019s plan, the framework is non-binding.\u00a0<\/p>\n It also does not create a new federal approval process. Federal AI minister Evan Solomon emphasized that provinces, territories and municipalities retain their existing responsibilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not for the federal government to say what a city, a town, a rural place in a province or territory should ask \u2014 but they should be armed with the fact they are beginning not three steps back, but three steps ahead,\u201d Solomon said.<\/p>\n He continued, \u201cif we don’t build the infrastructure of the future here, we will have to buy it from somewhere else. And if we don’t innovate here, we will rent that from someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n Email: [email\u00a0protected]<\/a><\/p>\n At a time when vital public information is needed by everyone,\u00a0The Pointer\u00a0has taken down our paywall on all stories\u00a0to ensure every resident of Brampton, Mississauga and Niagara has access to the facts. For those who are able, we encourage you to consider a subscription. This will help us report on important public interest issues the community needs to know about now more than ever. You can register for a 30-day free trial\u00a0HERE<\/a>. Thereafter,\u00a0The Pointer\u00a0will charge $10 a month and you can cancel any time right on the\u00a0website. Thank you<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Anushka Yadav – Local Journalism Initiative Reporter Sep 17, 2026 – Brampton, Mississauga, Niagara Forty-nine days after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":899853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194297],"tags":[49,48,55405],"class_list":["post-899852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mississauga","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mississauga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899852","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=899852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/899853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/6aac483abdb0d.jpg\")
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