Data Centres Are Already Here. Is Richmond Hill Ready for More?

Canada wants more computing capacity at home, and Richmond Hill already hosts several data centres, with more on the way. The real question is not simply whether they are good or bad, but what they require, what the community gets in return, and who carries the costs decades from now.

By Staff Writer

When StrongRH recently asked Richmond Hill residents what they thought about more data centres coming to the city, the verdict was fairly clear.

Of 176 people who responded to our informal Nextdoor poll, 96, about 55 per cent, called them a “bad idea.” Thirty-four, or 19 per cent, said they would be good for Richmond Hill. Another 19 said “it depends,” 15 did not really care, and 12 admitted they were not quite sure what a data centre was.

This was a self-selected social media poll, not a scientific survey. But the discussion underneath it was more interesting than the headline result. (StrongRH informal Nextdoor poll, September 2026)

Some residents saw data centres as a way to attract technology investment and businesses. Others questioned their electricity and water requirements, their relatively small number of permanent jobs, and whether Richmond Hill should devote scarce employment land to them.

Another argument also emerged: Canadian data sovereignty.

At a time when Canada’s economic relationship with the United States has become far less predictable, should this country continue relying so heavily on American companies and infrastructure for the computing, cloud storage and data processing on which Canadians increasingly depend?

Those are no longer theoretical questions.

Governments are beginning to ask them too.

And they matter in Richmond Hill because data centres are not something that might arrive here someday.

They are already here.

What exactly is a data centre?

At its simplest, a data centre is a building filled with computer servers and the equipment needed to keep them running continuously.

Every time we use cloud storage, stream video, make an online payment, access digital government services or use artificial intelligence, information has to be stored, transmitted or processed somewhere.

That somewhere is often a data centre.

They are not new. Richmond Hill has hosted them for years.

In 2018, the City announced construction of Urbacon Data Centre Solutions’ DC2 at the Barker Digital Campus. The 95,000-square-foot, 16-megawatt building was described at the time as the second of five data centres planned for the campus. (City of Richmond Hill, Barker Digital Campus announcement)

What is changing is the scale and urgency of the conversation.

Artificial intelligence requires enormous computing power. That is contributing to a new wave of larger, more electricity-intensive facilities and has turned what used to be a fairly obscure industrial land use into a major infrastructure and policy question.

Ontario NDP MPP Chris Glover, his party’s critic for technology and innovation, discussed that changing landscape in an interview with Richmond Hill podcaster Marj André, including concerns around environmental impacts, transparency and community involvement. (Chris Glover interview, Connecting the Community podcast with Marj André)

One distinction is important throughout this discussion:

Not every data centre is an AI hyperscale data centre.

Facilities differ enormously in size, computing equipment, electricity load and cooling systems.

So the useful question is rarely simply, “Are data centres bad?”

It is:

What exactly is this data centre proposing?

Richmond Hill already has several

Ward 1 Councillor Carol Davidson has been pushing Richmond Hill and York Region to look more closely at that question.

Davidson says Urbacon currently has three operating data centres in Richmond Hill, with another under construction and two additional facilities approved. A separate proposal in the Leslie Street and Orlando Avenue area would add a roughly 350,000-square-foot data centre.

Her concern is not that Richmond Hill should ban data centres. It is that municipalities may be considering them one at a time while the infrastructure demands accumulate across York Region.

Her member motion asks York Region to carry out an Infrastructure Capacity and Growth Readiness Assessment of data centres, looking at existing and anticipated facilities and the effects they could have on water, wastewater, electricity and future growth. (Councillor Carol Davidson’s data centre motion to Richmond Hill Council)

Davidson told André that Richmond Hill might look at one proposal in isolation and conclude that it can accommodate it. Vaughan or Markham might do the same.

But much of the infrastructure serving them is shared or interconnected.

My question is, what is our capacity in York Region for data centers? Before we all start individually approving them, what can we do?

Carol Davidson, Connecting the Community podcast

Her question is what happens when all those individual decisions are added together. (Carol Davidson interview, Connecting the Community podcast with Marj André)

That may be the most important word in this debate:

Cumulative.

How much water do they use?

The proposed Leslie-Orlando facility illustrates why.

According to information Davidson has published from the applicant’s servicing report, the proposed facility is expected to require approximately 2.4 million litres of water per day, primarily for cooling. She compares that with the daily consumption of more than 10,000 residents, or roughly 4,300 households.

Davidson estimates that known and planned data centres across York Region could together approach 22 million litres per day.

Those are significant numbers, but they should not become a shortcut to saying that all data centres consume millions of litres of water every day.

They do not necessarily.

Cooling technology matters enormously.

Some systems consume significant amounts of freshwater. Others recirculate water through closed-loop systems or use other methods that substantially change their water requirements.

Toronto offers an interesting example.

Enwave Energy Corporation’s Deep Lake Water Cooling system uses cold water drawn from deep in Lake Ontario to provide cooling to downtown buildings, including offices, hospitals and data centres. (Enwave, Toronto Deep Lake Water Cooling system)

That means the better Richmond Hill question is not:

How much water does a data centre use?

It is:

What cooling system will this particular data centre use, how much new potable water will it consume, and has that demand been accounted for in York Region’s long-term water and wastewater planning?

The federal government is now asking essentially the same thing. Its new responsible-development principles call on data centres to minimize freshwater consumption and favour technologies such as closed-loop cooling where appropriate. (Government of Canada, Responsible Data Centre Development Principles)

Electricity may be the bigger constraint

Servers operate around the clock, and cooling them also requires power.

For very large data centres, electricity demand can be enormous.

Ontario says data centres currently participating in one of its large-user electricity programs account for approximately 100 to 200 megawatts of demand.

More strikingly, the province says proposed data-centre connection requests could cumulatively exceed 10,000 megawatts.

For comparison, Ontario’s recent peak electricity demand has been about 25,000 megawatts.

That does not mean Ontario is about to add 10,000 megawatts of data centres. Many proposed projects may never be built.

But it explains why the province no longer regards these facilities as ordinary industrial electricity customers. (Ontario Environmental Registry, proposed data centre assessment framework)

There is another issue: timing.

Large data centres can be proposed and constructed faster than major new generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure can be planned and built.

So the question is not only whether Ontario has enough electricity today.

It is also:

I would want a bond for the reclamation of the entire site.

Chuck Marohn, Strong Towns podcast

What are we committing future electricity capacity to?

Strong Towns founder Chuck Marohn raises a version of that question from his experience in Brainerd, Minnesota, where a cryptocurrency mining operation sought access to a large amount of electricity.

His concern was not simply how much electricity the project would use. It was what reserving that capacity for one large customer could mean for other businesses or development trying to connect later. (Chuck Marohn, Strong Towns podcast Q&A on data centres)

That is an opportunity-cost question.

Electricity capacity committed to one development may not be immediately available to another.

Ontario now considers that important enough to change how large new data centres may be connected to the grid.

Ontario wants to choose which projects are worth the power

In August, Ontario launched the framework for a proposed Data Centre Playbook.

It rests on three broad tests: economic development, digital sovereignty, and benefits to host communities.

Among other things, the province proposes looking at jobs, investment, municipal and provincial revenues, Canadian supply chains, local participation, community infrastructure and the effect of projects on the technical and fiscal capacity of host communities.

Ontario is also proposing a separate electricity rate class for large new data centres so that their growth does not increase electricity costs for existing customers.

And the province now has legislative authority to establish requirements that covered data centres must satisfy before connecting or reconnecting to the electricity grid. (Ontario, Data Centre Playbook announcement)

The public consultation on the proposed assessment framework ran from August 13 to September 12. As of September 13, the Environmental Registry still lists it at the proposal stage, so the final framework has not yet been posted. (Ontario Environmental Registry, Economic and Strategic Assessment Framework for New Data Centres)

In other words, Ontario is increasingly saying that access to large amounts of electricity should not simply go to whichever project asks first.

The province wants to know what Ontario receives in return.

Richmond Hill should probably ask the same thing.

But Canada may genuinely need more data centres

There is an important argument on the other side of the ledger.

Canada increasingly regards domestic computing capacity as economically and strategically important.

That argument feels considerably less abstract in 2026.

Canada and the United States are now in an escalating trade conflict. Canada imposed new counter-tariffs on U.S. goods on September 8 after the United States imposed new tariffs on Canadian products. (Government of Canada, September 2026 counter-tariffs on U.S. goods)

Whatever happens next, the relationship has demonstrated that Canadians cannot simply assume that deep economic integration with the United States will always operate without political friction.

Digital infrastructure is part of that dependency.

Canada relies significantly on foreign infrastructure and services for cloud computing, data storage and the computing power needed for artificial intelligence.

On September 3, the federal government explicitly identified that dependence when it announced Canada’s Responsible Data Centre Development Principles.

Ottawa says building more computing capacity in Canada will give the country greater resilience and choice. (Government of Canada, announcement of Responsible Data Centre Development Principles)

Ontario is making the same argument. Its proposed framework specifically includes digital sovereignty, including a preference for Canadian-owned and operated facilities and stronger Canadian control over sensitive data and critical digital infrastructure. (Ontario Environmental Registry, data security and digital sovereignty pillar)

There is an important distinction, though:

A data centre physically located in Canada is not automatically sovereign Canadian infrastructure.

Ownership matters.

Control matters.

Who uses the computing capacity matters.

The laws governing sensitive data matter.

And reliable Canadian access to that computing capacity matters.

Still, this means a data centre can have strategic value beyond the number of people working inside the building.

Like an electrical substation, telecommunications network or water-treatment facility, some infrastructure is important even when it does not employ thousands of people on site.

That complicates the easy argument that data centres are undesirable simply because they may create relatively few permanent jobs.

And it should.

So what does Richmond Hill get in return?

This is where the issue becomes intensely local.

Richmond Hill does not have unlimited employment land.

A 2026 City staff report found that only 12 parcels totalling about 126 acres remained as vacant, unbuilt employment land within Richmond Hill’s business parks.

Five of those parcels, totalling 77 acres, were already under development application.

That left only seven parcels, totalling about 49 acres, vacant without an application. (City of Richmond Hill, 2025 Vacant Employment Land Inventory and Employment Lands Study)

The same report says Richmond Hill needs to protect its limited employment-land supply for target sectors and developments capable of attracting high-value companies and well-paying jobs.

That makes land an opportunity-cost question too.

So are electricity capacity, water capacity and public infrastructure.

A proposed data centre may bring significant private investment. Construction employment matters. Property taxes matter. Canadian computing capacity matters. Infrastructure improvements may matter.

Permanent employment matters too.

The useful question is not whether one of those benefits exists.

It is whether the overall exchange makes sense.

How many permanent jobs will remain once construction ends?

How much municipal tax revenue will the facility produce?

What new infrastructure will be necessary?

Who pays for it?

What local businesses or suppliers benefit?

What national strategic value does the facility provide?

And what else could have been built on the same employment land using the same infrastructure capacity?

These are not anti-technology questions.

They are the questions cities should ask whenever a very large project consumes scarce resources.

Ottawa is asking many of the same questions

The federal government’s new principles establish five expectations for responsible data-centre development.

Projects should create lasting local benefits, avoid shifting electricity costs to existing customers, minimize freshwater and environmental impacts, disclose their local impacts, and provide strategic value to Canada.

Ottawa says proponents should pay project-driven electricity costs, including generation, transmission, substations and grid upgrades directly attributable to their developments.

It also expects companies to provide clear and independently verifiable information on issues including electricity consumption, water use, infrastructure requirements, noise and emissions. (Government of Canada, Responsible Data Centre Development Principles)

These are principles, not a new federal building-permit system. Ottawa explicitly says development decisions remain fundamentally local and that the national framework is intended to complement provincial, municipal and Indigenous approval processes.

But there is a particularly interesting Richmond Hill connection.

Urbacon Data Centre Solutions is one of the companies that signed the principles.

In the federal announcement, Urbacon describes itself as 100 per cent Canadian-owned and says it has developed data centres in Canada for more than 37 years.

Its president, Anas Youssef, says the principles reflect how the company already operates and that Urbacon intends to remain accountable to its host communities over the long term. (Government of Canada, Urbacon commitment to the national data centre principles)

That gives Richmond Hill residents a useful benchmark.

If the principles call for transparency around electricity, water, infrastructure and community benefits, it is reasonable to ask how Urbacon’s Richmond Hill operations measure against them.

How much electricity do the local facilities ultimately require?

What cooling technologies do they use?

How much freshwater do they consume?

How many permanent jobs do they support?

What taxes and infrastructure contributions flow to Richmond Hill?

And how do they contribute to Canadian digital sovereignty?

Those answers would tell residents much more than simply knowing the dollar value of the investment.

The question almost nobody asks: what happens when it gets old?

Most development debates concentrate on opening day.

How much money is being invested?

How many construction jobs will there be?

When will it open?

Strong Towns founder Chuck Marohn argues that cities should look much further ahead.

Earlier this year he examined a proposed Google data centre in Hermantown, Minnesota, a city of roughly 10,000 people.

The proposed agreement includes roughly $130 million in new water, sewer and road infrastructure, built by Google and then turned over to the municipality.

Hermantown’s public works operation currently has an annual budget of only a little over $1 million.

Marohn’s concern is therefore not simply whether Google or data centres are good or bad.

It is scale.

Infrastructure that looks like a gift when someone else builds it becomes a municipal obligation once the city owns it. Pipes, roads and other systems have to be maintained for decades. (Chuck Marohn, “When the Decision Is Too Big for the City,” Strong Towns)

Marohn then takes the argument further in a later Strong Towns podcast.

Data-centre technology changes quickly.

The servers, chips and cooling systems installed today will eventually become outdated. At some point an operator must decide whether it is worth retrofitting the existing facility or whether building a new one somewhere else is cheaper.

Highly specialized buildings are not necessarily easy to reuse.

Marohn compares that risk with the familiar sight of an old big-box store being left behind while a newer one is built farther up the road.

With a data centre, the building and infrastructure can be even more specialized. (Chuck Marohn, Strong Towns podcast Q&A on data centres)

That raises a question rarely heard at ribbon-cuttings:

What happens to the site when the technology or business model no longer makes the facility economically useful?

And who pays when it is over?

Marohn proposes a practical answer.

If he were negotiating an agreement for a municipality, he says he would want financial security covering infrastructure that may eventually need to be disconnected and, more importantly, a bond sufficient to reclaim the entire site.

He compares the idea with mining.

A mining operator may be required to provide financial assurance before operating so that money is available to rehabilitate the land when extraction ends.

Marohn argues that cities should consider a similar approach for highly specialized data centres.

Remove the equipment.

Deal with infrastructure that no longer serves a useful purpose.

Rehabilitate the property so it can have another productive life.

Do not leave taxpayers with a large derelict site simply because the original operator has moved on. (Chuck Marohn, Strong Towns podcast Q&A on decommissioning data centres)

He also raises another important question: who actually owns the facility?

The famous technology company using computing capacity may not necessarily own the building or operating company. Facilities can be held through subsidiaries, project companies or specialized developers.

That means cities need to know exactly which legal entity remains responsible for long-term obligations.

Neither Ontario’s proposed framework nor the new federal principles explicitly requires the sort of end-of-life reclamation bond Marohn describes.

Governments are increasingly asking who pays while a data centre operates.

Marohn asks one more question:

Who pays when it stops?

So, are data centres good or bad for Richmond Hill?

That is probably the wrong question.

Canada may genuinely need much more domestic computing capacity.

Data centres support ordinary digital services, cloud computing, health care, financial services, research, government systems and increasingly artificial intelligence.

In a period of serious economic tension with the United States, having more critical digital infrastructure under Canadian control may also have strategic value that cannot be measured simply by counting the number of employees inside one building.

But “strategically important” should not mean “approve anything, anywhere, on any terms.”

Richmond Hill and York Region still need to understand the bargain.

Before approving major new facilities, residents should be able to get clear answers to questions such as:

1. How much electricity will the facility ultimately require, and what does committing that capacity mean for other future users?
2. What cooling system will it use, and how much new freshwater will it actually consume?
3. What water, wastewater, electricity, road or other infrastructure must be expanded, and who pays for it?
4. How many permanent jobs, how much tax revenue and what other lasting local economic benefits will the project create?
5. Is it an appropriate use of Richmond Hill’s increasingly scarce employment land?
6. Does it provide meaningful Canadian strategic or data-sovereignty benefits?
7. Who owns the land, building and operating company, and who carries the long-term obligations?
8. What happens if the facility becomes obsolete, closes or moves elsewhere?
9. Is money secured in advance so taxpayers are not left with obsolete infrastructure or an expensive site to rehabilitate?

Councillor Davidson is asking whether York Region has enough infrastructure capacity.

Ontario is beginning to ask which projects deserve access to scarce electricity and what communities receive in exchange.

Ottawa is asking companies to protect ratepayers, conserve water, disclose their impacts and strengthen Canadian digital resilience.

And Chuck Marohn is asking municipalities to think about the day long after the ribbon-cutting, when the technology has changed, the original operators may have moved on, but the infrastructure and land remain.

Taken together, they suggest a better test for Richmond Hill:

Can we support it?

Is it worth what we are committing to it?

Does it make Richmond Hill, and Canada, stronger?

And when its useful life is over, who is left holding the bill?

That is the conversation Richmond Hill should be having before the next data centre is built.