01/13/2026
It seems we’ve all accepted that AI is going to have a massive impact on the environment - from the surge in electricity demand to the pressure data centres place on our water systems.
But I keep wondering:
Does it really have to be this way?
What if Canada stepped back and rethought the entire approach to AI infrastructure before the problem grows larger?
Other countries have alternatives. China’s “DeepSeek” models, for example, reportedly require significantly less energy to train and run than their American counterparts (like ChatGPT and CoPilot) - proving that efficiency is possible when it becomes a design priority.
So here’s the question I can’t shake:
What if Canada made environmental excellence our competitive advantage in AI?
Imagine a flagship Canadian AI ecosystem built around:
- dramatically lower energy requirements
- optimized cooling + heating demands
- systems designed for northern climates
- water-conserving data architecture
- transparent, privacy-first engineering
- sovereign, homegrown IP
In other words - a Canadian way of doing AI.
Clean. Efficient. Ethical. World-leading.
Sure, can continue to be followers - or we can create our own future on our own terms.
We have the talent, the research capacity, the political will, and the environmental mindset to do it. What we need now is the national ambition to match.
Maybe the next generation of artificial intelligence should be designed not just to work faster - but to work responsibly.
