“If the people in this room say, ‘Yeah, you know what? I think we could support this,’ then\u00a0I’ll support it too.” – Joel Rowswell<\/p>\n
At a meet-and-greet this past week, Sault Ste. Marie’s five mayoral candidates were asked whether they would support hyperscale data centres being built here.<\/p>\n
The following\u00a0are their responses, mildly edited to remove redundancies.<\/p>\n
Matthew Toffelmire<\/p>\n
“This is a very good question. Having a background in computers and technology, I already know quite a bit about this topic, and what I can share easily is these hyperscale data centers. <\/p>\n
Whatever process they do, it doesn’t matter the the end job, whether it’s running another AI system or mining data or processing bulk stuff. <\/p>\n
It’s still, you know, however many megawatts they they plan it to be. If it’s 50 or 100, 400, it’s a bunch of computers in a building. <\/p>\n
What maintenance does your home PC actually require? Now you’re putting a whole bunch of these that also don’t require a whole lot of maintenance into a giant building. <\/p>\n
Ultimately, if you’re asking if we should have one of these built in town, there’s a lot of concerns. So I don’t have a whole lot of time. We’re a little limited on time here. <\/p>\n
But the questions that I would have is what impact would that have on the area where it goes into?<\/p>\n
Because there’s a lot of concerns all across the continent about these hyperscale centers. They could be loud. They could use resources. We need to have those questions answered. But also, how many jobs are they really bringing in? <\/p>\n
Again, how much maintenance does your home PC actually take? Maybe a little bit of maintenance once in a while. <\/p>\n
These machines largely are going to run themselves. Once the facility is built, there’s hardly any jobs inside. It’s all computers. It’s all technology. It’s all managed potentially remotely. It could be managed from Toronto. <\/p>\n
The only reason they have people inside that building is to clean up, dust out the machines, clean the filters, whatever they need to do. <\/p>\n
Bit of hardware goes bad, pull a card from it, plug a new one in. There’s your job. So how many jobs are really in these places? 10? 20?<\/p>\n
These are not big job facilities, so right now, I’d say no. I don’t think we need it. It’s certainly not going to be a big economic boom for the city.<\/p>\n
Josh McNally<\/p>\n
Yeah, I totally agree with that. There’s a ton of issues with it, right?<\/p>\n
I think we’ve all heard a bunch of people trying to push stuff through super quick and give us a bunch of fake numbers and stuff. <\/p>\n
And I don’t think we even need it.<\/p>\n
Like we love our nature, and I don’t think we want to sell that stuff, right? Just for a few jobs doesn’t make any sense to me. <\/p>\n
Like, we’ll see if we didn’t start still using them by then. I don’t know. Just seems silly to me to even contemplate it.<\/p>\n
Selva Rasiaih<\/p>\n
I think one of the big things we need to ask is what the purpose of the data center is, because we do live in a technology age, so we do have an obligation to consider should we have these data centers. <\/p>\n
So, in particular, the Yates project that actually, despite how it went through in terms of we weren’t consulted and First Nations weren’t consulted, it actually would be a good data center because it’s small. Its impact will be a lot smaller environmentally, and it’s for cybersecurity. And we all know we need cybersecurity. <\/p>\n
So if we’re going to pick a data center, we pretty much have the best one we can get: small, less impact on the environment, and something useful versus the large one proposed by Algoma Steel, which is Bitcoin mining, and as we all know, Bitcoin mining didn’t really take off. <\/p>\n
So what’s the purpose of having a Bitcoin mining data center? It’s not serving a purpose that’s great for our community. <\/p>\n
So part of what we need to do is recognize that we are in that digital age. We have to find the best version of a data center we can have, and I believe we already have that in Yates. <\/p>\n
So I think now we can kind of move on from data center debate and go onto other things because I think that we’re making the best choice already,. <\/p>\n
I think as a community, it’s now time to say we have a data center, and we’re going to work with Chief Gauthier and Missanabe Cree to make sure that it’s the best that it can be, and make sure the environmental everything environmentally is in place. <\/p>\n
And I think when we do that we’re showing that we do want some diversity, but we’re doing it smart. <\/p>\n
And this data center is probably the best we can get. And after that, like I said, we’re moving on to something more.<\/p>\n
Although Algoma Steel can do another medium or light industry, which is way more beneficial to this community than that data center.<\/p>\n
Matthew Shoemaker<\/p>\n
I won’t support any data center that doesn’t fit within the proposed municipal framework, and so we haven’t finalized the municipal framework. <\/p>\n
We did pass a moratorium, which I support supported to prohibit hyperscale data centers until such time as we have a regulation in place. <\/p>\n
The regulation, if it comes into effect, I want to see that iIf there are any data centers proposed, they don’t use all of our power capacity.<\/p>\n
They don’t draw too much water. They create a lot of jobs, and so those are the factors, among others that need to be considered before I would ever give support to any data center, large or small.<\/p>\n
I should make clear that data centers are not an economic development priority of the city currently, will not be an economic development priority if I’m reelected.<\/p>\n
What we want to focus on is attracting industrial diversification through the port, attracting administrative and management jobs at OLG, and ensuring that the port can be used as a economic diversification tool to bring other commerce and industry to the surrounding area. <\/p>\n
So, as a data center proposal comes to us, we of course have to consider it, just like a rezoning. When it comes to us, we have to consider it. <\/p>\n
But I would only support a proposal if it had high job creation numbers, low power use, and low water use. <\/p>\n
Because, as Selva said, we live in an age of data, and we need we’re they’re going to be processing that data, and so if there is going to be the need to have a center that processes that data, we want to ensure that it is having the least detrimental impact on our environment by not using too much water. <\/p>\n
We want to ensure it isn’t otherwise limiting our ability to attract industry by chewing up all the power that we’ve got in the area, and we want to ensure that it is creating the maximum number of jobs. <\/p>\n
So those are the qualities or the considerations that I would factor in in any proposal that came before us.<\/p>\n
Joel Rowswell<\/p>\n
So I’m in a bit of a conflict here, so my governing body actually is Chief McCoy and Chief Bell of the North Shore Tribal Council. <\/p>\n
What I will say is, I don’t think the process was transparent from the beginning. I don’t care if it’s five gigabytes, 500 megabytes.<\/p>\n
It was pushed through.<\/p>\n
People then had town halls to say, “Hey, did you look at the environmental studies, noise studies? Did you consult the public? <\/p>\n
I attended the council meeting when there was a bit of a little protest in the chambers, and city planning didn’t even put it out to the community.<\/p>\n
They just put it out to what, 100 meters within that radius. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, it impacts everybody in our community. The city needs to consider listening to the people.<\/p>\n
The people are the ones that need to decide. Do your homework. <\/p>\n
I’m not saying I’m for it. I’m not saying I’m against it. <\/p>\n
I do appreciate the comment about cybersecurity because cybersecurity is important. It’s used to protect all of us, a lot of entities have been hacked, held ransom for for millions of dollars. <\/p>\n
Even seniors, the vulnerable people. Just do your due diligence, do the studies. I’m glad it got put on pause.<\/p>\n
That I appreciate. If it comes back, and the people, the community that are in this room say, ‘Yeah, you know what? I think we could support this,’ then I’ll support it too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“If the people in this room say, ‘Yeah, you know what? I think we could support this,’ then\u00a0I’ll…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":920384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48,316936],"class_list":["post-920383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-joel-rowswellselva-rasaiah2026-municipal-electiondata-centres"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920383","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=920383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/920384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=920383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=920383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=920383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}