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County looks to uniform means to assess data centre applications

September 3, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By JAMES MATTHEWS

Dufferin County staff will begin reviewing the pros and cons of large data centres in the region.

Josh MacEwen is a long-time county resident and has been speaking to lower-tier municipalities about high-load facilities. He spoke to county council when it met Aug. 27 about the need for a common framework between municipalities to adequately assess applications for data centres.

No such applications have been received by any of the county’s municipalities, but there have been a number of conversations about the possibility.

“There is no known data centre application in Dufferin today,” MacEwen said. “This is about readiness, not panic.”

Dufferin County municipalities need to have frameworks in place to govern data centres to ensure applications don’t arrive before local bylaws have caught up. The question isn’t whether those facilities are good or bad. Rather, it’s whether the county has a shared framework by which applications can be weighed when one is proposed.

Data centres house computer servers and require cooling, a lot of electricity, backup power, and water resources. Data centres also have a large footprint.

Proponents support data centres because they can bring investment to municipalities and employment to local workforces. Opponents argue data centres strain electrical infrastructure, strain grids, take up a lot of land, and typically require a significant amount of water for cooling. Although centre’s water use is limited to what’s used in a closed loop.

So water use depends on the facility’s design. But all designs require a lot of land and electricity.

Dufferin already coordinates cross-boundary water through the joint municipal water management plan with Orangeville, Mono, Amaranth, and East Garafraxa.

Canada and Ontario are creating conditions for more large-scale AI capacity. A strategy at the federal level supports building or expanding commercial AI-specific data centres in Canada.

Ontario released a draft Data Centre Playbook in August alongside grid-connection rules. A provincial consultation is underway until Sept. 12.

These are also electricity-capacity proposals of roughly 7,000 megawatts of data-centre connection requests, which is more than a quarter of Ontario’s peak demand.

Throughout Ontario, lower-tier municipalities are converging on the same issue from different angles. And, without a uniform framework, each is left to invent its own answers under pressure.

Orangeville’s council has passed a motion in August requesting a comprehensive and balanced county review of data centre advantages and disadvantages, including groundwater and cross-boundary impacts.

In Amaranth, council directed its planning consultant to research a data-centre definition for its Official Plan update and asked that the county reflect it in its plan.

East Garafraxa and Melancthon had delegations requesting a county-coordinated readiness review. Each municipality presented their different local concerns from agriculture, headwaters, roads, servicing, but the same underlying gap.

“A proposal may be local in location but regional in impact,” MacEwen said.

Orangeville Councillor Tess Prendergast suggested during that town’s Aug. 10 council meeting that Orangeville should request the county undertake a comprehensive and balanced review of the potential advantages and disadvantages of new data centre development proposals.

The review should include possible impacts on economic development, employment, assessment growth, electricity demand and capacity, digital infrastructure, data sovereignty, cybersecurity, groundwater resources, municipal servicing, land-use planning, regional infrastructure and cross-boundary impacts, to inform future planning decisions.

Large developments have implications for groundwater resources, electricity demand, municipal servicing, land-use planning, and regional infrastructure.

Orangeville relies entirely on groundwater for its municipal drinking-water supply, and planning decisions by neighbouring municipalities may have cross-boundary impacts on drinking-water resources, infrastructure, and municipal services.

Dufferin County also plays an important role in coordinating regional planning matters that extend beyond municipal boundaries and affect more than one municipality.

MacEwen supported Prendergast’s notice of motion in August about regional water resources infrastructure. Economic benefits should be weighed against local and regional impacts before something like a data centre application arrives, he said.

County council agreed to support Orangeville’s request for the county to undertake a comprehensive review of the advantages and disadvantages of data centres.

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