Wonder Valley Watch: Through the looking glass
Update #1: Embark on a fantastical adventure with me discovering a myriad of unusual characters and nonsensical situations
My Scottish/Irish ancestors were immigrants who travelled by ship to the east coast of so-called “Canada” in the late 1700’s or early 1800’s and were part of several waves of genocidal colonization of the Indigenous people on Turtle Island. We arrived uninvited on the traditional unceded territory of the Wəlastəkewiyik (Maliseet) whose ancestors along with the Mi’Kmaq / Mi’kmaw and Passamaquoddy / Peskotomuhkati Tribes / Nations signed Peace and Friendship Treaties with the British Crown in the 1700s. As a child in the 1970’s, my parents moved west to work in the oil sands industry and I grew up in the Nistawâyâw (Cree) Ełídlį Kuę́ (Dene) - Fort McMurray area within Treaty 8 territory, which his home to six First Nations and six Métis communities. Today, I am grateful to be writing this newsletter from Moh’kinsstis, and the traditional Treaty 7 territory of the Blackfoot confederacy: Siksika, Kainai, Piikani, as well as the Îyâxe Nakoda and Tsuut’ina nations. This territory is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region 3 within the historical Northwest Métis homeland. I recognize that the land I now work and live on was stolen from these Nations (truth) and I support giving the land back as an act of reconciliation. Lands inhabited by Indigenous Peoples contain 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. Indigenous Peoples’ traditional knowledge and knowledge systems are key to designing a sustainable future for all. We are all Treaty people on Native land.
“I declare it’s marked out just like a large chessboard!” Alice said at last. “There ought to be some men moving about somewhere—and so there are!” She added in a tone of delight, and her heart began to beat quick with excitement as she went on. “It’s a great huge game of chess that’s being played—all over the world—if this is the world at all, you know. Oh, what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them! I wouldn’t mind being a Pawn, if only I might join—though of course I should like to be a Queen, best.”
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
The roll-out of Premier Danielle Smith’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Data Centre strategy may not be top-of-mind, but I’d like to put it back on your radar.
The strategy has been touted as “innovative” and an example of “economic diversification,” but in reality, it’s exactly the opposite. Despite what Nate Glubish, the minister of technology and innovation says, it’s merely providing cover for the government’s plan to double oil and gas production.
Just as Alice discovered in that weird mirror, everything is reversed, including logic, in a reflection of Alberta’s inability to see beyond fossil fuels.
Top of the long list of data centres planned or already underway in Alberta is the proposed “Wonder Valley” AI data centre that celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary has said he intends to build in northern Alberta at a cost of $70 billion.
For more information, read my previous article about Wonder Valley when it was first announced earlier this year.
O’Leary has so far only signed a letter of intent to buy the land but has a strategic partnership with a wealthy US real estate mogul named Frank McCourt. You would think it was a done deal the way it is being hyped online, but I’m not so sure.
(Ed. note: Wonder Valley comes up just about every time O’Leary appears on Fox Business, which is a lot!. I had to turn off that Google Alert as it was endlessly annoying me.)
O’Leary and McCourt have also indicated their joint interest in buying TikTok, which may or may not be related to their partnership on Wonder Valley. McCourt has announced something called “Project Liberty: The People’s Bid for TikTok.” He wants to “rearchitect the platform and put people in control of their digital identities and data.”
His vision seems at odds with Trump’s who has said that he wants the US government to partner with a company to control TikTok. Why would McCourt even entertain the idea of partnering with Trump as a way of giving users more control of their identities and data? Again, it’s Alice’s looking glass. What’s reflected is the opposite of reality.
The Wonder Valley business plan relies on the Alberta government giving them permits to belch out unfathomable amounts of carbon pollution (methane) while draining our water supply. Of course, the proponents don’t describe it this way. In their storytelling, it will be a tremendous boon for Albertans, but the facts from the experiences with other data centres don’t support this.
Coincidentally, around the time of the Wonder Valley project announcement, the government also announced its new “Automatic Yes” permitting policy.
I’m sure these two things are not connected?
(Ed. note: The Technology and Innovation department’s press secretary never did respond to any of the questions I emailed them about the connection between these two events, but I’ll let you know if they do!)
The Automatic Yes policy includes a “concierge service” for developers that was advocated for by Smith (when she was an oil and gas industry lobbyist). This is generally a commitment to work closely with companies to “navigate” the regulations and permitting process. It should be pointed out that no such assistance is available for others, including First Nations.
In the rush to shore up Canada against the US authoritarian regime, we seem excited to hand the keys to some of the very same types of people who’ve funded Trump’s rise to power. Most of what pops up in my feed (including on LinkedIn) are Albertans and others embracing it with a lot of enthusiasm, not a lot of critical thinking.
I guess, if all you do is view O’Leary’s AI-generated, dreamy video about Wonder Valley, and only read their promotional materials, you could be lulled into believing this is all good news for Alberta, and for Canada.
The “Greenview Industrial Gateway” (GIG) south of Grande Prairie is where Wonder Valley is going to be located. It keeps being referred to as O’Leary’s favourite “unicorn” of a site. I suspect it may be one of the Alberta government’s “designated industrial zones” which have special rules, but I have not been able to confirm that, only that it was “modelled" on the Heartland Industrial Zone, outside of Edmonton.
As data centre technology advances, the plan for most of the data centres being built across the continent is to reduce the footprint by using renewable energy, and striving for more compact computing power. What Smith and Glubish don’t seem to want to acknowledge is that the type of AI data centres they’re banking on are not going to be around much longer. And Alberta’s hostility towards renewable energy is actually scaring some investors away.
The Wonder Valley Watch: Follow me down the rabbit hole
Someone has to keep an eye on this, and since I’ve been doing it anyway, I’ve decided to add a regular Wonder Valley “watch” to my newsletter. As I discover new and interesting (sometimes alarming) developments, I’ll share them with you.
So, follow me down the rabbit hole as I update you on some of the characters involved — Mr. Wonderful himself, Abu Dhabi data centre guy Carl Agren, and Kyle Reiling, the GIG’s executive director and the project’s second most prolific promoter.
On the other hand, there is also Chief Sheldon Sunshine of the Sturgeon Creek Cree Nation who has expressed concern about a lack of consultation with the First Nation about the project, and even went so far to pen an open “cease and desist letter” to the premier.
“The way they act and talk; it’s as if our land and water is there for the taking, and we are expected to get in line to receive the so-called economic benefits.”
Chief Sheldon Sunshine
He’s also one of the Treaty 6, 7 and 8 chiefs who’ve taken Smith to task for her talk of lowering the threshold for a separation referendum. Relationships with Indigenous people in that area do not seem to be going well, so this could create real friction.
I’ll do my best to follow up with news articles when there are significant developments but until then, these updates will allow you to follow along with what is happening.
It’s a gold rush!
O’Leary gave a keynote speech at Data Centre World 2025 held April 14-17 in Washington D.C. calling data centres “today’s gold rush.”
O’Leary claimed Wonder Valley was big on “sustainability,” failing to mention that it would be running entirely on natural gas turbines.
However, he said they will provide power to the grid, but that requires battery storage and smart meters to forecast and manage energy supply.
Data centres require reliable power to the “five-nines” standard, which means 99.999% availability. A data centre can only be down for less than five minutes and fifteen seconds annually to meet reliability requirements—about half the time it takes to brew a pot of coffee.
This presents challenges for companies wanting to connect to the electricity grid, and may be driving some to use natural gas instead of drawing from an increasingly unreliable grid.
Read more about the challenges data centres bring to the electricity grid in this article in The Energy Mix.
In his keynote speech, O’Leary explained his sales pitch to local governments this way:
“Arrive in town to build more power for them at low cost, to provide lots of construction jobs for locals, to set up training of technicians who will man the facility, to eliminate flaring of natural gas to lower emissions, and to bring in tax revenue by buying stranded natural gas assets.”
It has long been claimed that data centres eliminate flaring, but that has not proven to be the case in reality, by the way.
He also generously promised the “campus” would be surrounded by “nature trails and wilderness areas.” After levelling 7,000 acres of land to build the campus, I guess.
The stars are aligned!
An undated article in Site Selection magazine, a corporate real estate industry publication based out of Georgia, US was added to the Wonder Valley website and it claims the “stars align in Wonder Valley.”
Paul Palandjian, CEO of O’Leary Ventures told the author of this article that “we will be in the ground and up and running sooner than any scale project of its kind.”
He said McCourt has “a billion dollars of capital from Guggenheim,” and “has committed the first $100 million of capital toward the project.”
“Ultimately, the things that drive a pro forma for a data center include a relatively smooth pathway to permits; an advantageous tax regime and incentives; and not too many regulatory restrictions that would impede your ability to deliver all the redundancy required and maintainable systems.”
Paul Palandjian, CEO of O’Leary Ventures
As for the “advantageous tax regime and incentives,” Glubish said in the same article that Alberta was not offering any provincial-level incentive programs. (Ed. note: We shall see.)
“Our value proposition is that we offer unlimited energy and a fast approval process. Time is money. We can give you the gift of time.”
Palandjian told the publication they would “complete due diligence on the geotechnical, water and power solutions and close on the land purchase in the next six to nine months.”
Next year, presumably in 2026, he said they expect permitting and approvals, which would be followed by groundbreaking in 2027, followed by 14-18 months to complete construction.
“At $70 billion, this proposed data centre mega-project is set to be the largest investment in Alberta’s history and the largest investment of its kind in the world,” Premier Smith said in an email response to a query from Site Selection.
The oil sands may beg to differ. We keep hearing these claims but I’m doubtful.
The article includes some details about how the project came about, some of which I’ve read about before.
Apparently, they looked at four locations in Alberta: Greater Calgary, Medicine Hat, the Industrial Heartland and the GIG. Carl Agren, who was involved in locating the first data centre in Abu Dhabi, was also part of the decision-making.
A whirlwind romance
It sounds like an agreement came together pretty quickly, according to Reiling.
“I had received notification from one of the ministers that someone was looking at a large-scale data centre development. They asked if I was available to go to Calgary and participate in a meeting on a large project.”
He said he met Palandjian and spent three hours with him and others.
“After spending the whole morning with us, the company then met with Alberta Premier Smith and other leaders,” Reiling said.
According to the article, Smith then “joined Kevin O’Leary in paying US President Donald Trump a visit at Mar-a-Lago to discuss Wonder Valley and Trump’s tariffs.”
Interesting. At the time, it was described officially as a visit to convince Trump to drop or reduce the tariffs on oil and gas.
(Ed. note: The timing of all this may be significant for reasons I will explain in a future post.)
“We know that the small nuclear reactors are not going to be ready anytime soon. And whether you use nuclear or natural gas, they require a tremendous amount of water. Very few communities have this kind of water. The GIG does,” said Palandjian. (my emphasis)
Water. Perhaps Alberta’s most valuable resource now and into the future. Or if you look at it another way, we don’t own the water, we share it, and Alberta has no right to unilaterally give or sell it to American billionaires for cooling down their AI data centres.
A cheap date
Also important in the decision to locate in Alberta was the cost, which gave the GIG a competitive advantage.
“We can produce power at 3.5 cents Canadian in Alberta. We will be paying one-third to one-fourth of what they will be paying for power in the U.S.”
He said the design will be built to 80% of the specs used by all the major hyperscalers since they don’t yet know who the end user of the data centre will be”.
“By and large, Microsoft, Google, Meta, SAP, Tesla and Oracle all have slightly different specs for their data centres, but there are some common threads.”
“There are not 1,000 potential clients. This is more like alien hunting in space and there are only seven aliens.”
Paul Palandjian, CEO of O’Leary Ventures
One of the few things I may agree with Palandjian on is that Microsoft, Google, Meta, SAP, Tesla and Oracle do kind of fit the profile of aliens. And who is the seventh alien?
O’Leary Ventures plans to recruit its workforce locally and said it will work with the technical college in Grande Prairie to develop curriculum to train locals.
Wendy Unger, government and industry liaison for the Municipal District of Greenview told the publication that Wonder Valley plans to hire 100 to 150 full-time employees per phase over seven to 10 phases. She also said the (up to) 4,000 construction workers needed to build the campus over the next decade would be housed in a temporary worker camp on site.
Everything I’ve read about these data centres suggests the number of workers required to build them and the numbers of permanent workers usually don’t pan out as expected. So, don’t get too excited.
Finally, I can’t think of a more dystopian vision than that of enormous data warehouses controlled from south of the border by Trump’s oligarchs, with rows and rows of computers humming away across thousands of acres of levelled forests. This behemoth of a project will need to suck huge amounts of water from the nearby Smoky River to keep it cool, while machines “learn” from stolen data, training themselves to replace people in the very jobs they promise to create.
What are we getting ourselves into here? Please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment.
(Ed. note: From viewing the stats on hyperlinks for these posts, it appears not many people are clicking links. So, I have not included links to every fact or observation as they do become a bit unwieldy and make the process of posting a lot more time consuming. If you would like more details on anything that doesn’t include a source or link, please leave me a comment and I’ll provide them by request. I am saving and organizing them using an application called Trello.)