New Resources For Local Communities Navigating Data Centres
Urban Climate Leadership and Climate Caucus launch Ground Rules: Ensuring Data Centre Development Happens on Local Terms, a new national initiative equipping municipal leaders with practical tools to assess data centre proposals and secure stronger federal funding and support mechanisms that enable local decision-making about data centre planning.
As data centre development accelerates across Canada—announced data centres represent a 14-fold capacity increase—local councils are forced to make rapid decisions about land use, water use, air quality, electricity, and public infrastructure that can impact a community for decades to come. Local leaders need clear information about a project's benefits, costs, long-term responsibilities, and potential impacts before making decisions or commitments—and greater resources to assess that information.
Ground Rules is a partnership between Urban Climate Leadership and Climate Caucus, combining applied research, convening expertise, and custom-developed resources for local communities. The initiative will support councils and municipal staff across Canada, particularly in small and mid-sized communities where capacity to assess complex projects can be limited.
A dedicated website and a free-to-download Ground Rules toolkit offer practical guidance, questions to ask developers and examples of bylaws and motions municipalities can use. Together, these resources help local leaders scrutinize proposals, identify information gaps, engage residents and create conditions that serve their communities' best interests. The partnership also advances federal standards, transparency and funding to support that work.
Our shared commitment is to ensure communities have a meaningful say in data centre development and the tools to turn that voice into informed decisions they can live with.
Explore the resources, sign up for future events, and read our federal asks here.
Quotes:
Mairin Loewen, Associate Program Director, Urban Climate Leadership
“Data centres are arriving on councils’ agendas faster than ever, sometimes presented to communities as inevitable, while the information councils need to weigh the trade-offs is missing. Councils need to know what they are being asked to approve, who pays, and who is ultimately responsible. Ground Rules helps councils ask the right questions before decisions are made, not after.”
Zoe Grams, Executive Director, Climate Caucus
“Ensuring local governments have the information and tools they need to make decisions right for them is ultimately about democracy. Communities across the country are struggling with the pace of development and the consequences of data centres in their backyards. Ground Rules gives them practical tools to make informed decisions and sends a clear message to Ottawa: if Canada wants to get data centre development right, local leaders need to be at the table.”
About Urban Climate Leadership
A project of MakeWay Charitable Society, Urban Climate Leadership is dedicated to dismantling obstacles to equitable climate action by local governments. In acknowledging the distinctive challenges faced by Canadian small and large cities, the initiative assembles a diverse array of stakeholders to collaboratively propel systems-changing solutions.
About Climate Caucus
Climate Caucus is a non-partisan, national non-profit working at the intersection of two essential pillars of shared prosperity: local democracy and climate policy. As the largest network of climate-forward local elected leaders in Canada, we develop, launch and scale beneficial climate policies for communities and the country.
Media contacts: media@urbanclimateleadership.org | morag@climatecaucus.ca
