To: Government of Ontario
Subject: ERO Notice 026-0853 — Proposed Economic and Strategic Assessment Framework for New Data Centres (Data Centre Playbook).
Submitted within the public comment period open until 11:59 p.m. on September 12, 2026.
In summary, I am requesting that the final Playbook incorporate the following structural changes to safeguard the public interest: (1) establish a binding health-and-environment assessment pillar with mandatory health impact assessments and an absolute prohibition on siting or development in the vicinity of residential, school, and hospital zones — that is, any location where the facility’s noise, air, or other emissions would reach those zones; (2) codify every environmental standard as a legally binding regulation or an explicit condition of grid connection under Bill 40—backed by real-time independent monitoring, severe financial penalties, and grid-disconnection triggers for violations; (3) strip out all vague, voluntary, or “best efforts” language; (4) protect municipal planning autonomy by committing to an absolute ban on the use of Minister’s Zoning Orders (MZOs) or Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) overrides to bypass local land-use decisions; and (5) mandate enforceable economic-benefit clawbacks alongside genuine Canadian jurisdictional data control. My detailed analysis and requirements follow.
I appreciate the opportunity to provide input on the Government of Ontario’s proposed approach to the development of the Data Centre Playbook. While public consultation is a critical step toward ensuring Ontarians have a voice in infrastructure decisions that shape our communities, the current draft framework requires significant strengthening to meaningfully protect public interest priorities. The single most urgent issue requiring intervention is the fast-tracked siting and construction of industrial-scale data centres immediately adjacent to residential homes, hospitals, and schools. This is not a matter of NIMBY-ism; it is a direct response to a very real, documented threat to long-term community health and well-being.
After reviewing the proposed approach, I am deeply concerned that the scope of the playbook is dangerously narrow. The draft framework is shaped entirely around economic development, cybersecurity, and investment attraction, with little indication that feedback outside of these industry priorities will influence the final Playbook.
This structural narrowness is built directly into the legislation upon which the Playbook rests. Bill 40 (the Protect Ontario by Securing Affordable Energy for Generations Act, 2025) explicitly codifies “economic growth” as a formal mandate of the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) and the Ontario Energy Board (OEB), with no corresponding statutory obligations for public health, environmental sustainability, or community well-being. The draft Playbook inherits this unbalanced, one-sided mandate. To protect Ontario residents, the final framework must give public health and environmental protection equal statutory standing to economic growth, rather than treating them as optional, subordinate considerations.
The current direction appears heavily influenced by tech-industry interests and lacks mandatory transparency, public reporting, or binding community consultation. Consequently, Ontarians are left unable to track how decisions are made and how public energy and water resources are allocated. Furthermore, the framework completely ignores the severe negative impacts—ranging from continuous noise pollution to grid strain—that residents in other jurisdictions are actively experiencing due to the hasty building of data centres near their communities. The absolute omission of dedicated, binding pillars addressing environmental and health impacts associated with large-scale AI data centres is a critical flaw that leaves communities exposed to preventable risks. It signals that public-interest safeguards have not been adequately factored into the province’s AI Industrial Strategy.
To be considered a responsible, comprehensive, and protective framework, the final Data Centre Playbook must integrate the following sixteen non-negotiable requirements:
1. Require Mandatory Health Impact Assessments
Industrial data centres must be entirely banned from residential zones and hospital and school areas. Health Impact Assessments should be used to evaluate baseline safety within far-removed dedicated industrial zones. Data centres generate significant, relentless, and persistent infrasound and low-frequency noise (ILFN) from industrial heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems, electrical transformers, and backup generators. Persistent low-frequency noise and disrupted sleep patterns are medically recognized contributors to chronic physiological stress, which is fundamentally associated with poorer long-term health, cardiovascular risks, and metabolic decline. Community-level low-frequency noise from large industrial facilities has been proven to cause severe annoyance and chronic sleep disturbance, the exact category of impact that previously compelled Ontario to strictly regulate wind-turbine acoustic emissions. Unlike wind energy, the massive concentrated footprint of an AI data centre cannot be resolved with setbacks and requires complete residential exclusion.
Furthermore, diesel backup generators emit dangerous air pollutants, specifically fine particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometres or smaller (PM 2.5), which is an independent risk factor for chronic respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, including asthma, heart disease, and stroke. Given that the absence of localized studies showing immediate harm does not equate to evidence of safety, the precautionary principle dictates that a rigorous, independent assessment of health impacts—utilizing project-specific acoustic modeling and frequency-specific measurements, rather than misleading overall decibel averages—must be completed prior to any development approvals.
2. Establish Binding Environmental Standards
The provincial government must establish clear, enforceable, numeric environmental limits rather than relying on voluntary industry assurances or unverified claims about future technology. Each standard must be set as an enforceable numeric limit in regulation or as an explicit, binding condition of grid connection under Section 28.1 of the Electricity Act (as amended by Bill 40). These regulations must mandate strict nighttime dBA limits, low-frequency (ILFN) thresholds measured to verified international standards (e.g., ANSI/ISO), and hard caps on daily water consumption and vibration. Compliance must be independently monitored and publicly reported in real-time, with automatic financial penalties and the immediate suspension or revocation of the grid connection upon any breach. The government must establish these specific thresholds by regulation with a published health-and-environment rationale; all “voluntary,” “best efforts,” and “discretionary guidance” terminology must be stripped from the final text.
3. Mandate Full Public Transparency
Before any project is granted approval, the public must have unrestricted access to comprehensive data regarding corporate ownership, operational intent, and projected resource consumption. Proponents must proactively disclose complete site plans, total electrical megawatt demand, backup generator specifications, battery energy storage layouts, fire-protection systems, and projected localized noise and air emissions. This operational data must be maintained transparently throughout the facility's lifecycle via an open public portal, completely eliminating the need for complex freedom of information requests. Furthermore, all relevant environmental, health, and infrastructure studies must undergo a mandatory independent review by qualified third-party experts selected exclusively by the municipality or the Province, executed entirely at the developer's expense.
4. Secure Economic Benefits with Binding Commitments
Developers should be required to provide specific, legally enforceable economic commitments rather than vague, aspirational statements regarding local job creation, wage tiers, compute access for Ontario small businesses, and domestic supply chain participation. The final Playbook must explicitly define "accountability" within this section: where a developer fails to meet a contractually committed community benefit, there must be automatic, real-world consequences—including severe financial penalties, the full clawback of any provincial development support, or an immediate regulatory review of the facility's grid connection. Commitments absent a strict penalty for breach are merely corporate aspirations, not binding obligations.
5. Protect Municipal Decision-Making Authority
Municipalities must retain complete and meaningful planning authority throughout the approval process, including an absolute right to reject proposals that threaten local zoning or community well-being. Specifically, the Playbook must state that its framework cannot be used to override municipal zoning by-laws, interim control by-laws (ICBLs), or Official Plan policies. Where provincial guidelines and municipal requirements differ, the stricter, more protective local standard must legally prevail. The province must formally commit that Minister’s Zoning Orders (MZOs) will never be deployed to force a data centre onto a site contrary to a municipality’s land-use decision. Furthermore, the province must ensure that local residents and municipal councils retain full standing to be heard before any tribunal or regulatory body. The true risk to local democratic decision-making lies not just in the electricity connection gate, but in land-use overrides and developer-led tribunal appeals. Therefore, the Playbook must enforce a strict, baseline rule that excludes these facilities from residential sectors entirely, ensuring that land-use compatibility assessments or provincial overrides can never be used to justify placing an industrial facility adjacent to a home, school, or hospital.
6. Uphold Canadian Data Sovereignty Through Responsible Siting
Canadian data sovereignty is frequently invoked by industry proponents to justify the rapid, unregulated expansion of data centres, but the concept is routinely misrepresented. True data sovereignty dictates that Canadian data must remain exclusively under Canadian legal jurisdiction; it does not dictate that industrial-scale data centres must be built in residential neighbourhoods. A foreign-owned or foreign-controlled data centre physically located on Ontario soil remains deeply vulnerable to foreign statutory reach, including the United States Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act. Physical location alone does not guarantee data sovereignty. To safeguard Canadian data and Ontario communities, the Playbook must mandate that operators fall exclusively under enforceable Canadian privacy, security, and data-residency requirements, require a mandatory assessment of foreign ownership and national security risks, stringently regulate cross-border data transfers, and strictly restrict data centre placement to heavy industrial zones completely removed from residential areas. Sovereignty is achieved through robust governance, rigid oversight, and absolute jurisdictional control, never through harmful siting decisions that place local residents at risk.
7. Make Every Policy Standard Legally Enforceable
Every community, health, and environmental protection outlined in the final Playbook must be fully enforceable through formal regulation or codified as a non-negotiable condition of grid connection under Section 28.1 of the Electricity Act. A framework that merely “encourages” or “prioritizes” good corporate behaviour leaves vital community protections entirely to industry discretion. All voluntary terms must be eliminated.
8. Establish a Health-and-Environment Pillar and Enforce Residential, School, and Hospital Exclusion Zones
The province must add a fourth, independent evaluation pillar of equal weight to the existing economic framework, specifically covering health, environmental sustainability, and land-use compatibility. The Playbook must enact a strict, non-overridable regulatory ban that entirely outlaws data centres from being placed on land that borders, touches, or lies within residential, school, or hospital zones, or at any location where the facility’s noise, air, or other emissions would reach those zones.
9. Regulate Energy and Prohibit the Fossil-Gas Backdoor
The playbook's core principle requiring developers to pay the "full cost of electricity" must be legally binding and subject to independent annual audits to guarantee that no hidden system costs shift onto household ratepayers. Furthermore, the framework must strictly prohibit or place a tight, non-negotiable regulatory cap on on-site fossil-fuel power generation (such as behind-the-meter natural gas turbines). Allowing unrestricted on-site generation creates a dangerous backdoor loop, enabling developers to function as massive, unregulated fossil-fuel power plants that entirely compromise Ontario's carbon-reduction and clean-energy targets.
10. Mandate Cumulative and Regional Impact Assessments
The framework must prohibit evaluating data centre proposals in isolation. In regions experiencing dense developer interest, the Province must mandate a regional cumulative impact assessment. Evaluating facilities one at a time creates a dangerous blind spot where multiple data centres—each individually claiming to sit "below a resource threshold"—can collectively overwhelm a community’s local air quality, public water tables, municipal infrastructure, and regional electricity grid.
11. Require Decommissioning Bonds and Financial Assurances
To protect taxpayers from long-term financial liabilities, the final Playbook must require developers to post an irrevocable decommissioning bond or financial assurance security prior to breaking ground. This security guarantees that funds are permanently locked away for future site cleanup, industrial remediation, and the safe, specialized disposal of massive lithium battery energy storage systems and toxic cooling fluids, ensuring the public is never left holding the financial liability if an operator goes bankrupt or vacates the site.
12. Require Genuine, Funded, Pre-Approval Community Consultation
The framework must mandate genuine, fully resourced public consultation phases that occur well before any structural approvals are granted. These consultations must be legally capable of altering the project outcome, including site rejection, to ensure communities can enforce an absolute boundary against heavy industry. Furthermore, the Playbook must explicitly mandate separate, robust consultation with affected First Nations communities, fully consistent with the Crown’s constitutional duty to consult and accommodate.
13. Establish Clear Enforcement, Monitoring, and Revocation Powers
Environmental and operational standards mean absolutely nothing without regulatory teeth. The final Playbook must establish an independent enforcement body tasked with real-time monitoring and public reporting of data centre emissions. This body must be armed with the statutory power to levy severe, compounding financial penalties and execute the immediate suspension or permanent revocation of grid connections for facilities found in breach of local standards.
14. Force On-Site Power Generation Through a Separate, Formal Approval Process
As provincial grid capacity tightens, developers are increasingly seeking to add independent, on-site fossil-fuel generation (such as gas turbines) to power their facilities. The final Playbook must strictly dictate that any proposed on-site power generation cannot proceed via a minor administrative amendment or shortcut. Instead, any addition of on-site power must be forced through its own independent, full public environmental assessment and formal provincial approval process to protect the procedural rights of the host community.
15. Eliminate "By-Right" Zoning on Employment Lands and Force a Heavy-Industry Class
Large-scale data centres are currently permitted to proceed "by-right" on general employment and light industrial lands without requiring specific municipal re-zoning approvals. This loophole is the primary reason local councils and residents lack the legal authority to halt inappropriate sitings, such as the controversial Ninth Line potential project in Oakville. The final Playbook must direct and empower municipalities to establish a distinct, dedicated "Heavy Industry Data Centre" zoning classification. Reclassifying these massive digital factories would automatically strip away "by-right" zoning permissions from standard commercial/employment lands, explicitly removing the legal mechanism to even apply for a zoning amendment or variance near a residential area, restricting the classification exclusively to heavy industrial hubs.
16. Enforce Enhanced Safeguards Near Natural Heritage Sites and Wetlands
For any data centre proposed in proximity to natural heritage features or Provincially Significant Wetlands (PSWs), the Playbook must mandate rigid, non-discretionary environmental protections. This must include an absolute construction setback from the ecological feature (mandating a minimum restriction of 100–200 metres consistent with established Ontario practice for natural heritage setbacks and confirmed by localized environmental evidence) alongside mandatory, engineered stormwater retention ponds. These systems are vital to safely offset the massive loss of natural surface water absorption caused by these industrial footprints, protecting vulnerable local water ecosystems from chemical runoff and altered drainage patterns.
Numerous communities across Ontario, including Hamilton, Oakville, Mississauga, and others, have already demonstrated exceptional local leadership by proactively engaging residents and municipal staff to demand sustainable, protective approaches to digital infrastructure. Public concern and opposition are rapidly intensifying across the province due to what appears to be a systematic fast-tracking of heavy AI infrastructure at the direct expense of community safety. Ontario must refuse to expand its digital footprint without enforceable health standards, transparent public oversight, mandatory local consultation, and rigid public-interest conditions attached to all grid connections.
A regulatory framework that assesses data centres primarily for their short-term economic value, while leaving public health, localized environmental stability, and municipal sovereignty to voluntary corporate good will, is fundamentally irresponsible. I demand that the final Data Centre Playbook make these sixteen critical protections mandatory, measurable, and legally enforceable, firmly prioritizing the long-term health, safety, and financial protection of Ontarians over the accelerated pace of corporate tech investment.
Respectfully submitted.
