Saskatchewan’s Opposition NDP is calling for the province to pause construction on large-scale artificial intelligence centres until more robust public consultations on the projects are done.

Leader Carla Beck called for the moratorium Tuesday, a day after Premier Scott Moe and Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Bell Canada intends to quadruple the size of its planned data centre project outside Regina.

The expansion would boost capacity of the data centre from 300 megawatts to 1.2 gigawatts.

Beck said Moe made the announcement unilaterally with “zero public consultation.”

The Opposition leader said the Saskatchewan Party government also failed to consult on another project planned in Moose Jaw and a third near Saskatoon.

“Municipal governments are required to hold public consultation before they construct a parking lot on an empty field — surely, we can hold ourselves to the same standard on projects that will have a major impact on our power grid, our water supply and our broader environment,” Beck said in a statement Tuesday.

She said her team has been consulting with thousands of residents who have expressed concern over how high their power bills will go to run such centres.

Moe has said Saskatchewan has enough power in its grid to operate the Bell data centre, and more would be available as the province moves toward nuclear technology.

A spokesperson for the premier referred to video posted on Moe’s Facebook page when asked to comment on the NDP’s call to pause data centre projects.

In the video, Moe said Bell is responsible for bringing the power it needs for expansion.

“Saskatchewan families and businesses are not going to pay for that additional power,” he said.

As for water concerns, he said the facility will use a closed-loop cooling system and won’t draw from local sources.

“Water use is expected for this project to be very similar to an office building with about 130 employees,” Moe said.

He did not mention the two other data centre projects in the province and did not provide comment on public consultations.

The Bell project expansion was announced Monday at the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto, where Carney said the project is expected to bring in more than $50 billion in capital investment.

“It is the largest sovereign AI infrastructure network in Canada,” Carney said.

Moe said Tuesday in a video posted to Facebook that the project would help provide for data sovereignty, noting that Canadians’ data is currently being stored at data centres outside the country.

“So the question is simple: Do we want to protect that information, do we want to keep home ice advantage, or do we want to give it away to someone else in another country far away?”