Data Centres in East Gwillimbury: Environmental impact, Economic Development
I’ve been clear about this on Facebook and in my campaign messaging, and I want to lay out the full case in one place: I am against large-scale data centres in East Gwillimbury, and as your Mayor, I will fight to keep them out.
This isn’t a knee-jerk position. It’s grounded in what these facilities actually do to a community, to a grid, and to a local economy, and it reflects a record on Council that I am proud to stand behind.
The Environmental Case Against Data Centres in East Gwillimbury
Large-scale data centres are being proposed across Ontario right now, and every one of them comes with the same real costs:
Massive electricity draw. A single hyperscale data centre can consume as much power as a mid-sized city, running 24/7, every day of the year, with no seasonal let-up. That’s not a one-time construction impact; it’s a permanent, compounding load on the system for the life of the facility. This is the part that doesn’t get talked about enough locally, so let’s be direct about it. It seems like the frequency of power outages has only increased over the past few years. Adding an energy-sucking data centre won’t make it any better. Hydro-One needs to be investing in our grid infrastructure. Some investment is being made, but most would agree it isn’t nearly enough.
Enormous water use. Many data centres rely on evaporative cooling systems that consume millions of litres of water a day. In a region where we are already planning carefully for water and wastewater capacity to serve new housing growth, handing that capacity to server farms instead of families is the wrong trade-off. It begs the question of where the water could come from? More pumping stations that would drain local aquifers or perhaps Lake Simcoe? Neither is acceptable.
Constant industrial noise. Cooling systems and backup generators at data centres run continuously, not just during business hours. Residents near these facilities report noise that never really stops, day, night, weekends. That’s a quality-of-life cost that doesn’t show up in a corporate site-selection pitch, but it shows up for the neighbours.
Land consumption. Because East Gwillimbury is blessed with available land, we would be a natural target to locate these data centres. These facilities eat up hundreds of acres of land, often at the exact locations we’d otherwise be planning for housing, employment lands with real job density, agriculture, or green space. In a town managing the kind of growth pressure East Gwillimbury is under, that land is too valuable to hand over to server racks.
Ten Reasons East Gwillimbury Should Say No
The environmental and economic case above is only part of the picture. When you look at how a data centre actually moves through the municipal planning process, and what it leaves behind, the case against them gets stronger, not weaker.
Zoning & Land Use Data centres require industrial or special-purpose zoning, and that almost always means a rezoning application and an Official Plan amendment working its way through East Gwillimbury Council. Every one of those applications is an opportunity to say no, and I will.
Power Consumption These facilities draw enormous amounts of electricity, placing real demand on local hydro infrastructure and the provincial electricity grid. Electricity system planning in this province wasn’t built around absorbing a large data centre’s connection approval on top of the residential growth East Gwillimbury already has coming. There is currently no centralized public database tracking how much power data centres operating across Ontario are actually drawing, which makes it even harder for a municipality like ours to plan responsibly around electricity consumption we can’t fully see coming.
Water Usage Many data centres use water-cooling systems, and that raises real concerns about water supply, usage permits, and local watershed impacts. We are already planning our own water and wastewater servicing carefully around housing growth. There is no responsible data centre model that changes the basic math: that capacity should go to families, not server farms.
Tax Revenue Yes, a data centre generates assessment-based property tax revenue, and that argument gets used to sell these projects to municipal budgets. But tax revenue in isolation isn’t economic development. It has to be weighed against what the same serviced land and grid capacity could support instead, and against the ongoing municipal services and infrastructure costs a facility like this can quietly generate.
Employment Impact Despite their size, data centres typically create very few permanent local jobs. Once construction wraps, a massive facility might employ a small maintenance and security staff, full stop. That’s a genuinely poor return on the land, water, and electricity these facilities require, and it’s a key consideration I bring to every economic development conversation at the Council table.
Environmental Footprint Construction impact, ongoing energy use, and heat emissions all need to be part of the environmental footprint assessed during planning approvals, not treated as a formality on the way to a yes. A technology company proposing a data centre should have to clear the same real environmental bar as any other major industrial use, not a lighter one because the building is full of servers instead of machinery.
Community Consultation Residents and ratepayer groups have the right to participate in public meetings and hearings on any proposed data centre development. I’ll make sure East Gwillimbury residents get real advance notice and a real opportunity to ask questions, not a rezoning application that’s already most of the way through the process before most people hear about it.
Infrastructure Strain Large facilities add pressure to roads, utilities, and servicing capacity, which means every proposal needs a genuine municipal infrastructure assessment before it goes anywhere near approval. That includes honestly accounting for what a data centre’s operational demands would mean for infrastructure East Gwillimbury is already stretching to keep pace with growth.
Noise & Nuisance Cooling systems and backup generators produce ongoing noise, not an occasional disturbance but a constant one, and that has to be treated as a serious factor in site plan conditions, not an afterthought. Neighbouring residents shouldn’t have to live with round-the-clock industrial noise because a facility’s operational requirements were prioritized over theirs.
Provincial & Regional Oversight Data centre approvals don’t stop at the Town line. York Region, the Province of Ontario, and agencies like the TRCA all have a role, layering governance beyond what East Gwillimbury alone controls. That’s exactly why local Council needs to use every tool available, zoning, Official Plan policy, and a clear public position, to make our opposition known at every level before a project ever gets that far.
Why Are Data Centres Bad Economic Development Policy?
Data centres are frequently pitched as an economic win, part of Ontario’s push to establish itself as a hub for cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the broader technology and digital economy driving demand from companies like Google and Microsoft. They aren’t a win for a community like ours. These facilities are among the least labour-intensive industrial developments there are; once construction wraps up, a massive data centre might employ a small maintenance and security staff. Compare that to the jobs-per-acre and tax-base value of the employment lands and mixed-use development East Gwillimbury needs as we grow. We would be trading scarce serviced land and grid capacity for very little in return.
There’s also a broader regulatory landscape question here. Ontario doesn’t yet have a clear, updated framework under the Electricity Act or through the Minister of Energy that requires data centre developers to demonstrate they’re using a reliable, approved power source, or to ensure new electricity demand doesn’t simply get passed on to existing customers and residents. Markham and other municipalities across the economic landscape of the GTA are already grappling with these same questions, and East Gwillimbury shouldn’t have to figure out data sovereignty, data security, and privacy requirements around AI and cloud infrastructure on the fly, with no centralized provincial guidance and no transparency into how these companies plan to deliver electricity responsibly.
My Voting Record on East Gwillimbury Council
I don’t just say this; I’ve voted this way. Last July, Committee of the Whole considered two of the most important environmental initiatives East Gwillimbury has taken up in years: the Community Energy Plan and the Climate Adaptation Plan. Large-scale data centres run counter to both of those policies. I was the only candidate for Mayor who voted in favour of both plans.
I have thirty years of environmental action, not just promises. From founding member of the Environmental Advisory Committee in 1991 to the current Council liaison. Our environment isn’t negotiable, and my record proves it.
As Your Mayor
As your Mayor, I’ll say no to data centres in East Gwillimbury. Not on my watch.
