“Wonder Valley, what could possibly go wrong” virtual meeting

“I would say that there are several questions that I would encourage people to ask. The first is what are the potenial impacts on my utility bills? Because we’re living in a pretty tight time here in Alberta, generally speaking, and the reason for that question is we have seen utility prices absolutely skyrocket in other jurisdictions and other states where they have these big AI data centres.”

“The second question is, what’s going to be the impact on access to water rights for communities? When push comes to shove, the Smoky River and other water sources can be scarce, especially at particular times in the year, so if I were a community member, I’d be asking some hard questions about allocation, conservation and sustainability of water use.”

“The other thing is, have the company, the municipality and the government of Alberta thought about doing any kind of scan of the existing research on impacts to human health, when it comes to rare cancers and other impacts on human health? The final one is, I don’t understand, why we wouldn’t do our due diligence and go through normal regulatory processes like an environmental review process, similar to the one that’s done for big oil sands projects, pipelines, and coal mines.”

Lafortune adds that “these are legitimate, authentic concerns,” and shouldn’t be something that is dismissed without in-depth research, instead of “steamrolling this project through.”

“The other thing I’d say is just to call out our friend Kevin O’Leary. I saw him talking the other day saying that anyone who is opposed to the AI data centres proposing in Utah and in Wonder Valley up in the Peace is either working for the Chinese government or a paid activist, and I just think he needs to get his head out of his butt quite honestly because people have real concerns from community impacts like in Tumbler Ridge and also just community impacts in terms of cost to consumers, environmental and public health impacts.”

“This is not about anything other than people who really care about their communities wanting to know what’s being built in their backyard and having some serious doubts about whether or not it’s a good thing.”

Besides potential impacts on the environment and health of residents, as previously mentioned, Laforunte believes it is an ethical dilemma; “When we saw what was going on in Tumbler Ridge in real time, down in Edmonton, it was horrific, and it’s really hard to justify moving ahead, with the infrastructure that powers all of this AI when you have tragedies, preventable tragedies like what happened in Tumbler Ridge.”

“That’s a big conversation as well when it comes to AI data centres, is what kind of information and data is being processed and transmitted through these data centers, we just haven’t wrapped our heads around, as communities, how especially younger people are engaging with artificial intelligence and how that is ultimately, influencing behaviour and in the worst instances creating real tragedy.”

For those reasons, Lafortune and PIA believe a moratorium needs to be put in place on all these AI projects so more research can be done.

He also encourages all Peace Region residents to contact their local MLA, municipal officials and MP regarding these issues, or attend the Wonder Valley open house on Thursday, June 4, in Grovedale, hosted by O’Leary Ventures and the MD of Greenview.

Residents with concerns about AI or the Wonder Valley project are also invited to attend Public Interest Alberta’s digital open house this evening at 6:30 p.m. (Thursday, May 21) to discuss their concerns.

That digital meeting can be accessed by clicking here.

by Tanner Smith