Bell Canada announced plans this week to quadruple the scale and capacity of an AI data centre being built near Regina, bordering land owned by the George Gordon First Nation (GGFN).
The nation’s chief, the province and the company are promoting the benefits the project will bring, but some GGFN members aren’t convinced.
GGFN has partnered with Bell and the government on the massive project, which is scheduled to become operational next year. Bell says it will to generate $12 billion of economic revenue for Saskatchewan.
GGFN Chief Shawn Longman said the expansion is a catalyst for broader development that could generate revenue, employment and economic capacity for his nation.
“They kind of gave us that foot in the door to be able to have that partnership for development,” Longman said. “Having access to this vital infrastructure that’s going to allow us to also develop the land on our side of the street.”
That could include much-needed roads, water, sewage, power and other infrastructure, he said.
Longman said the project also has potential to improve access to health care and education.
“I look at it as an opportunity for us to have distance education, to have maybe satellite universities where our band members can still live on the reserve,” he said.
Longman said the GGFN’s relationship with Bell has been constructive so far.
“They’ve shown us very good faith and openness … and wanting to work with First Nation people,” he said. “We don’t often see that.”
Longman acknowledged a lack of consultation early on the project.
“I think there should have been, in the beginning, more opportunity to negotiate and more opportunity to sit down and receive advance notice,” he said.
He said GGFN ultimately took the opportunity to help its people, believing the project was “well engineered” and “least harmful to the environment.”
Early site preparation and construction has already begun.
Janna Pratt, a GGFN member living off-reserve in Regina, questions whether members have had a meaningful opportunity to participate in decision-making about the project.
She pointed to Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe’s comparison of the data centre to the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, calling it a historic nation-building project.
“Today, the infrastructure has changed but the purpose has not,” Moe said.
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For Pratt, the history of that very railway illustrates why economic development cannot be separated from its consequences for Indigenous peoples. The railway helped build Canada, she said, but also had devastating consequences for First Nations on the Prairies.
“The consequences [of the railway] were the buffalo, right? And starvation to the people that were here before Saskatchewan was here,” Pratt said.
She said it’s a reminder of why Indigenous people must have a meaningful voice before major developments transform their lands and communities.
According to a podcast published on the federal government website in 2024, the construction of the railway “served as a catalyst for the mass displacement of Indigenous peoples and the exploitation and even death of laborers involved.”
Cali Longman, a GGFN member who grew up on-reserve and now studies interactive design technology at Saskatchewan Polytechnic, is concerned the project’s economic benefits won’t reach ordinary community members.
“I don’t think it’s going to be as beneficial as people are thinking,” she said. “This isn’t going to make us money…. This is all going toward much bigger pockets than ours.”
In its announcement of the data centre in March, prior to the planned expansion, Bell said it was increasing its revenue goals for “AI-powered solutions” for 2028 to $2 billion from $1.5 billion as a result of its expected impact.
Longman is also skeptical that the promised jobs will be long-term.
“Its probably going to be a lot of construction jobs, and once that construction job is over, everyone’s going to have to be let go.”
Longman worries about the development’s proximity to her nation, particularly its potential impact on water, noise, heat and energy use.
“It was bad enough when it was just a smaller project, but now they’re putting even more money into it, making it even bigger,” she said.
“Any business that we might have tried to put on the land, any house that we try to put on the land, is going to feel the brunt of all that pollution and all of that stress of being right next to that data centre,” she said.
“These concerns of mine are for the Earth. Like everything that I do, everything that I say against AI is to protect our environment and to protect our people,” she said.
