07/14/2026
I did not attend the Mayor’s hastily called Special Council meeting on AI data centres today. I believe it’s important to be transparent about why.
At the end of last week, Mayor Andrea Horwath announced she was calling a Special Council meeting on AI data centres. She called this meeting without consulting her colleagues.
In a directive she issued to Council by email, she described the meeting as an “education and training session” adding “it has become clear that Council does not have a common understanding of a subject matter before us - AI data centres”.
She further opined it was “therefore the responsible thing to do, and in fact our obligation from a governance perspective, to ensure a baseline level of understanding for all of Council is made available”.
I don’t agree with the Mayor’s reasoning or approach to calling this Special Council meeting.
Today’s meeting follows a lengthy discussion at the Planning Committee on June 16, where the majority of Council heard from dozens of registered public delegates on AI data centres.
The Mayor did not attend the June 16 Planning Committee to listen to the public and neither of the two main proponents of AI data centre projects in Hamilton, McMaster University and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, showed up to delegate.
At that Planning Committee meeting, a motion by Ward 3 Councillor Nrinder Nann, which I seconded, was discussed that called for a pause on all AI data centre developments in the city to allow staff to develop an Interim Control Bylaw - essentially creating community, environmental, and municipal standards surrounding their development. The motion passed unanimously 9 to 0.
The motion was then voted on at the next Council meeting on June 24 by all of Council and passed 15 to 1 (with Councillor Brad Clark being the sole vote against). The Mayor voted in favour of the motion and staff were tasked with developing a draft Interim Control Bylaw for Council to consider.
Just days after voting in favour of creating an Interim Control Bylaw, the Mayor unilaterally decided an education and training session was in order.
I don’t know what happened in the interim to cause the Mayor to conclude Councillors had cast misinformed votes at two different meetings.
What I do know is the Mayor has invited the proponents of the AI data centres to “educate and train” Council. One of them is a registered lobbyist - Michael Schull, Chief Executive Officer for the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. I’ve attached a page from the official Lobbyist Registry so you can see this information for yourself.
This is the furthest thing from good governance. Setting up a meeting that will, as the Agenda states, “include education on the two AI data centre proposals currently being discussed locally” is deeply problematic. It’s not education. It’s a project pitch disguised as education. Education and training sessions for members of Council should be based either in governing legislation or come as a request from the majority of members of Council, not as a unilateral decision by the Mayor.
It appears what’s happening here is the Mayor is granting privileges to lobbyists so they can have their own Special Council meeting. During the last term of Council, the public cried foul when lobbyists and project proponents were given more time to speak at a public meeting than others. I spoke out about the unfairness then, and I’m standing by those same principles today.
If the Mayor needs more education, she’s free to go out, on her own time, and get it, not take up more time from Councillors and staff hearing from lobbyists and proponents who could have easily shown up with the public on June 16, taken their 5 minutes each, as was granted to everyone else, and made their case. That would have ensured a balanced discussion and provided the public an opportunity to respond to what they heard.
At today’s Special Council meeting there will be no ability for the public to speak. It has been set up, solely, to listen to proponents with active projects in the pipeline. Was there no way to find experts to conduct an education and training session who don’t have a perceived conflict of interest?
Although the Mayor may have the legislative authority to call this Special Council meeting, I don’t believe it was the right thing to do.
I did my homework on this subject long before I cast my votes at the Planning Committee on June 16 and Council on June 24 and I’ll continue to defend the motion I seconded - a one year moratorium on AI data centres with no lobbyist loopholes. I look forward to the discussion at Council tomorrow and to voting to ratify the Interim Control Bylaw.
