Making Sense.

On Saturday, June 27, hundreds of people marched from the Vancouver Art Gallery to City Hall to oppose two planned AI data centres in Vancouver (which are being built through a partnership between Telus and the federal government). It was the second major demonstration in about a month, organized by a group called No AI Vancouver. The protesters' central concerns were water and power, a pointed issue with Metro Vancouver under Stage 3 water restrictions. One of the sites, the former Hootsuite headquarters in Mount Pleasant, is slated to come online by the end of 2026, with a second facility on West Georgia Street planned for 2029.

The two sites are part of a larger Telus "Sovereign AI Factory" cluster being developed with the federal government and Vancouver developer Westbank. The City of Vancouver supports the proposal, with Mayor Ken Sim calling the facilities "world-class," and Premier David Eby said the province has regulations in place to keep the centres from becoming mass consumers of water. Telus says its sites will be built on the leading edge of environmental responsibility. On the power question, AI and data-centre projects in BC already have to compete for grid electricity through BC Hydro, with allocation over the next two years capped at around 400 megawatts. No AI Vancouver remains unconvinced, estimating that a single centre could draw 55,000 to 70,000 litres of water a day for cooling and calling for any data centres to be publicly or community owned, with strict limits on water and power use.

We'll be staying tuned to see how this plays out, as the environmental concerns collide with the growing demands (and economic value) for AI infrastructure.

This month, Toronto's Signal 1 AI management platform was adopted by Mount Sinai, a leading US academic hospital system, to monitor and govern the AI tools it already runs. Signal 1 was founded in 2022 by Tomi Poutanen, a former chief AI officer at TD, and Mara Lederman. They built clinical AI applications first, then found that what hospitals needed most was a way to oversee their growing collection of AI systems, and refocused the company on exactly that.

The story shows where AI adoption is heading. An increasing number of organizations are now hitting the challenge of overseeing all the AI tools they are running, knowing they are working properly, and knowing they can be trusted. That oversight is becoming a market of its own that Gartner expects to pass $1 billion by 2030, and Signal 1 is among the companies chasing it.

Calgary's tech ecosystem is growing at four times the rate of the rest of the country, at roughly 40% a year since 2021 against a national average of 9.6%, according to Startup Genome's 2026 Global Startup Ecosystem Report. The report places Calgary among the world's emerging ecosystems alongside cities like Abu Dhabi and Warsaw, and ranks it in the top ten in North America for affordable talent. Venture investment in the city has grown 1,000% since 2018, driven by momentum in cleantech, fintech, and agtech, the sectors where Calgary's energy and agriculture base gives it a natural head start.

The rise has been deliberate rather than accidental. Platform Calgary counted $323 million invested in its member companies in 2025, up 36% year over year, backed by municipal funds aimed squarely at building the innovation base, and local leaders are openly targeting a spot among the world's top ten emerging ecosystems. For BC, it is a useful reference point as the province works out how to keep its own AI and tech advantages compounding rather than drifting to larger hubs.