{"id":902299,"date":"2026-09-20T01:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T01:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/902299\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T01:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T01:00:08","slug":"mp-calls-on-new-brunswick-to-reject-proposed-ai-data-centre-in-open-letter-to-premier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/902299\/","title":{"rendered":"MP calls on New Brunswick to reject proposed AI data centre in open letter to premier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Calls to reject AI data centre<\/p>\n

Eli Ridder, The Canadian Press – Sep 19, 2026 \/ 9:45 am | Story: 631784<\/p>\n

\"MP<\/p>\n

Photo: The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

MP for New Brunswick Southwest John Williamson rises during Question Period on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Thursday, April 16, 2026.<\/p>\n

A New Brunswick member of Parliament is calling on the provincial government to reject a proposed artificial intelligence data centre in Saint John, warning that it could overwhelm the power grid.<\/p>\n

Conservative MP John Williamson says the proposed AI centre will trigger electricity rate hikes for ratepayers across New Brunswick.<\/p>\n

Williamson says the public utility NB Power lacks the necessary capacity to handle the facility’s demand for 200 megawatts from the grid.<\/p>\n

He laid out his opposition to Beacon Data Centers’ project in a letter to Liberal Premier Susan Holt.<\/p>\n

The New Brunswick Southwest MP also criticized Holt for highlighting the data centre project at a major Toronto investment summit earlier this week, even though it hasn’t received provincial government approval.<\/p>\n

The New Brunswick government says any new data centre must pay for the costs it creates and cannot lead to higher electricity rates.<\/p>\n

Beacon AI says its project requires 390 megawatts of energy and that it could produce up to 190 megawatts on site.<\/p>\n

Williamson said the company wasn’t interested in generating all of its own power.<\/p>\n

“I met with them and I raised this and they balked,” he told The Canadian Press in an interview Friday, referencing a meeting he had with the company a several months ago.<\/p>\n

That’s why, he said, he wants the province “playing hardball” with companies that want to build data centres so that ratepayers are shielded from major price hikes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Calls to reject AI data centre Eli Ridder, The Canadian Press – Sep 19, 2026 \/ 9:45 am…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":902300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-902299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902299","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=902299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}