Halifax’s waterfront became a focal point for rising anxiety over Nova Scotia’s energy future on Saturday, as residents gathered to oppose a massive data centre proposal they say threatens local water supplies and delivers few benefits to the province. The demonstration targeted a $10 billion investment by energy infrastructure firm EverWind, which plans to lease its Point Tupper site to Anthropic, the American artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot. While Premier Tim Houston frames the project as critical national infrastructure, opponents argue the deal was struck behind closed doors and risks draining the very resources communities rely on.
A Deal Struck in Private
The announcement landed on Friday with the weight of a foregone conclusion. EverWind confirmed an initial 95-megawatt phase slated for late 2027, with a 325-megawatt expansion targeted for 2028, eventually reaching 420 megawatts at full build-out. Anthropic’s head of Canada public policy, Jacob Glick, said the facility would bring computing capacity closer to the growing Canadian user base for Claude. Yet the speed of the reveal left a sour taste.
“They tell us AI will take our water and our power and our jobs and our art, and maybe will kill us all,” said Megan Boudreau, one of the protest organisers. “And they shouldn’t be surprised that we’re upset and standing up here today after knowing these things.”
Boudreau and co-organiser Ashley Drodge described the plans as “randomly announced.” Residents of Port Hawkesbury, less than a kilometre from Point Tupper, echo that sentiment. Aidin Pottie, who held a sign reading “you can’t drink data,” said a recent EverWind conference in town had hinted at ongoing talks but offered no specifics. “Clearly this has been in the works for months,” he said.
The Water Question
At the heart of the opposition lies Landry Lake. It serves as the primary water source for Port Hawkesbury — drinking water, shower water, cleaning water. The prospect of a data centre drawing heavily from that supply for cooling has triggered alarm in a region where wells already run dry in summer.
“Quite frankly I just don’t think that’s alright,” Pottie said.
Data centres are notoriously thirsty operations. A single large facility can consume millions of litres of water daily for evaporative cooling. In a province increasingly familiar with drought conditions, the maths does not comfort locals. EverWind has not yet released detailed water management plans for the campus, a gap protesters say undermines any claim of responsible development.
Jobs, Power, and Sovereignty
Premier Houston defended the project on Friday, saying discussions had been underway for roughly a month. He framed the centre as essential sovereign infrastructure. “The data we use every day in our healthcare system, for all our banking needs, for everything on our phones. Business is run on data, government runs on it. We need more secure infrastructure, more secure data infrastructure,” he said.
EverWind chief executive Trent Vichie cited up to 2,000 construction jobs and 215 permanent operating positions. But Drodge dismissed those figures as misleading. “There’s not going to be the CEO coming from Nova Scotia. They’re going to be coming from Anthropic. We know it’s Anthropic that is going to take over this company or this AI center and we simply cannot just be continuing to throw our money back at the Americans,” she said.
The sovereignty argument cuts both ways. Houston sees Canadian compute capacity as a strategic asset. Critics see a foreign corporation extracting local resources — water, electricity, land — while the high-value intellectual property and profits flow south.
Regulatory Hurdles Ahead
The project remains subject to regulatory approval. Glick acknowledged Canada has set a “high bar” for responsible data centre development, though he offered no timeline for environmental assessments or community consultations. Protest organisers are not waiting. They have called a province-wide demonstration for 7 November, signalling a sustained campaign rather than a one-off objection.
For now, the land at Point Tupper sits quiet. But the conflict crystallises a broader tension facing Atlantic Canada: the rush to attract green energy and tech investment versus the capacity of small communities to absorb industrial-scale demand on fragile ecosystems. The next move belongs to regulators — and to a premier who must decide whether “secure infrastructure” includes the consent of the people who live beside it.
Why it Matters
Nova Scotia’s showdown over the Point Tupper data centre is a preview of the resource conflicts that will define the AI era. As governments race to secure domestic computing power, rural communities are being asked to trade water security and grid capacity for promises of jobs that may never materialise locally. The outcome here will signal whether Canadian climate and consultation frameworks can withstand the pressure of multi-billion-dollar tech deals — or whether the infrastructure of the future will be built on the same extractive logic as the past.