Wednesday, May 13, 2026
The federal government announced that along with TELUS they are advancing work under the government’s Enabling large-scale sovereign AI data centres initiative.
TELUS, Westbank and the Government of Canada are working together on the details of this collaboration, as TELUS scales its Sovereign AI Factory network across three world-class facilities in British Columbia. TELUS’ first Sovereign AI Factory in Rimouski, Quebec, opened in September 2025.
“Canada cannot compete in the AI economy without the infrastructure to back it up. By advancing this project with TELUS, we are taking concrete action to build sovereign AI capacity here in Canada, so Canadian innovators, researchers and businesses have access to the compute they need, while keeping Canadian data, intellectual property and economic advantage on Canadian soil,” said Evan Solomon, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation.
Leveraging an initial 85 megawatts (MW) of clean, renewable power secured from BC Hydro, TELUS is expanding its existing Kamloops data centre and developing two new Vancouver facilities with Westbank and its partners. The Kamloops AI Factory will come online later this year; the M3 facility in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood will open at the end of 2026 and scale through 2028; and the 150 West Georgia facility will come online in 2029, with the cluster’s total capacity scaling to over 150 MW by 2032.
At full scale, the three-site cluster will house AI infrastructure featuring high-performance NVIDIA GPUs to support large-scale AI model training, complex simulations and production-scale deployment.
In Budget 2025, the government indicated its intent to identify a limited number of large-scale sovereign commercial AI data centre projects and to engage with the most promising proposals through non-binding memoranda of understanding (MOU). The government will explore mechanisms that enable large‑scale commercial AI data centres to be built in Canada. This will provide additional compute capacity for the broader domestic innovation ecosystem.
“We are incredibly proud to be working with the Government of Canada to help build Canada’s sovereign AI infrastructure. The unprecedented demand that completely sold out our first AI factory in Rimouski proves that Canadian innovators want cutting-edge AI infrastructure built right here on Canadian soil. We are sending a clear message to the world: Canada will lead the AI revolution with uncompromising technological power and unparalleled climate leadership,” said Darren Entwistle, president and CEO of TELUS.
Designed to be some of the world’s most sustainable sovereign AI data centres, the Vancouver facilities will set a new global standard for sustainable AI infrastructure. Powered by 98 per cent renewable energy, the facilities are designed to integrate into the City of Vancouver’s Neighbourhood Energy Utility in Mount Pleasant and Creative Energy’s downtown district energy system, supporting the decarbonization of over 50M sq ft of real estate. A closed-loop liquid cooling system will reduce cooling energy consumption by 80 per cent compared to traditional data centres, while recycling electricity as carbon-free thermal energy to heat the equivalent of 150,000 homes. Water consumption will be 90 per cent lower than traditional data centres, with plans to incorporate recycled water from BC Place.
“TELUS has proven over the past year that sovereign AI infrastructure built on trusted telecom platforms delivers real results; in fact, AI-native companies are already training, deploying, and scaling on TELUS’ NVIDIA-powered platform,” said Ronnie Vasishta, SVP, Telecom, at NVIDIA. “This next phase of growth validates how trusted telcos like TELUS become the infrastructure layer of a nation’s economic future.”
Featured image: (Governmen of Canada)
