Oakville has put a one-year hold on new data centres, making it the first municipality in Ontario to take this action as local officials deal with worries about the latest facilities that support artificial intelligence.
Councillors have also instructed staff to evaluate whether the town’s regulations need updating to tackle possible noise, vibration, and emissions from data centres, along with wider land-use issues.
“We’re operating here not out of fear, and not in reaction to any one application,” said Mayor Rob Burton before the unanimous vote supporting the moratorium at a special town council meeting on Tuesday.
“That’s our job: to be alert, and to take the measures necessary.”
Oakville’s moratorium comes as neighboring Mississauga is preparing to vote next month on its own data centre freeze while other municipalities in Ontario look into what rules they can establish for new developments.
While Oakville officials mentioned there were no formal data centre applications pending, developer Hive Digital Technologies announced plans in May for a 320-megawatt AI facility in the Greater Toronto Area expected by late 2027.
Land records showed that a Hive subsidiary bought property in Oakville just days before this announcement was made.
The councillor representing that area supported Oakville’s moratorium plan. Coun. Tom Adams described the town’s data centre study as “not only appropriate but responsible.”
“Oakville deserves a clear, evidence-based understanding of how data centres interact with our electricity, our water, our wastewater and our telecommunications infrastructure, our environmental goals, our employment lands, the character of our neighbourhood, and, most importantly, the health of our residents,” Adams told a council meeting this week.
A Hive spokesperson did not specifically address the moratorium but stated it respected Oakville’s “right to develop a planning framework for data centre development.”
“We remain committed to Oakville and to earning the community’s trust through openness and transparency,” spokesperson Nathan Fast said in an email.
The competition among major tech companies like Open AI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Google has led to increased demand for data centres-energy-intensive warehouses filled with powerful computer chips used for training and running complex AI models.
Canada currently has only a few large hyperscale data centres; however, many more are planned. In July, Meta revealed plans for a one-gigawatt data centre in Alberta powered by a new gas plant.
Hamilton was first among Ontario municipalities to propose a moratorium vote; however it did not pass. Mississauga is set to vote on its proposed moratorium next month.
Meanwhile, Waterloo Region voted Tuesday to direct staff to assess impacts of data centres and possibly push for a provincial framework outlining how proposed developments should be evaluated and managed. Toronto city council passed a similar motion last month.
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