Fear-based Luddism must not be allowed to dictate Canada’s future. Canada needs to build and generate value.
A four-word Tweet from Prime Minister Mark Carney has generated a significant online response, with over 2,000 comments and over 1 million views at the time this was written:
Carney’s Tweet related to a recent announcement of government investment in three Telus AI factory projects:
“The government of Canada and Telus announced on Monday plans to advance three AI factory projects in British Columbia. The company says the centres could generate a potential $9 billion in economic activity. At Telus Gardens, the telco company’s global headquarters in downtown Vancouver, Telus laid out plans for a “sovereign AI factory cluster” that would run primarily on renewable energy provided by BC Hydro. Projects include scaling Telus’s existing 215,000-square-foot data centre in Kamloops and building two additional AI factories in Vancouver.”
While a purely free-market approach would be preferable (Canada creating a low-tax, abundant, affordable energy business environment that would attract investment), the government is at least recognizing the importance of the AI sector and the need to kickstart Canadian growth in that sector.
NDP Opposition
In response to Carney’s post, NDP Leader Avi Lewis called for a moratorium on new data centre construction:
“It’s time to build affordable homes, a national network of public grocery stores, electric buses and an east-west clean energy grid. Not massive corporate AI data centres unleashed without any democratic debate.
There’s also no real data sovereignty in an AI ecosystem dominated by U.S. tech giants. Telus may be Canadian-owned, but it has already transferred 14 petabytes of Canadian data onto Google Cloud as part of its AI strategy.
This is a technology that will bring sweeping changes at a scale and speed never seen before. Canadians deserve real oversight and a robust regulatory framework before we rush ahead.
That’s why we’re calling for an immediate pause on the construction of any new AI data centres until strong federal guardrails are in place.
We can’t sit back and let Big Tech billionaires decide our future for us.”
Irrationality
Lewis’s call for a data centre construction moratorium is irrational because it would be hugely damaging to Canada’s economy and would worsen rather than address his stated concern over “big tech billionaires” deciding the future. Were Canada to halt data centre construction, the private sector investment in the sector that does exist in Canada would simply evaporate and head to the U.S. and other areas open to building. This would reduce the size of Canada’s tech sector relative to the tech sectors of the U.S. and other nations. And since AI will continue to advance and integrate into the economy regardless of what Canada does, we wouldn’t impact the world with such a moratorium, but would simply leave ourselves worse off.
Rejecting Luddism
Like the Luddite movement that smashed up machinery, the neo-Luddites don’t seek to generate value or raise economic efficiency and growth, but rather to destroy or freeze development. This attitude must be rejected. Giving in to fear-based responses about the rapid pace of technological change will do nothing to stop that change from occurring, but will instead only ensure that the jobs and wealth generated by those changes go elsewhere. Rather than fearing competition, Canada must embrace it. We have immense natural resources, a well-educated population, and a strong tech sector. If we combine those things with lower taxes, fewer regulations, and a ‘build fast, build now’ attitude, we will become a much more prosperous country.
Spencer Fernando
Image – Twitter
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