Telus-Westbank AI data centre decision pushed until after Vancouver election | Daily Hive

Vancouver City Council punts decision on Telus-Westbank AI data centre proposal in Mount Pleasant until after election

Artistic rendering of the Telus AI data centre at Main Alley tech campus' M3 building at 111 East 5th Ave. and 2060 Quebec St., Vancouver. (WZMH Architects/Telus/Westbank)

One of two highly controversial proposals from a partnership between local developer Westbank and telecommunications giant Telus to build major artificial intelligence (AI) data centres in Vancouver will not be decided by Vancouver City Council this month.

On Tuesday, July 21, City Council unanimously voted to reverse its July 14 decision to send the rezoning application for the site at 111 East 5th Ave. and 2060 Quebec St. to a public hearing on the evening of Thursday, July 23.

The proposal would see Westbank substantially renovate M3 — a six-storey office building constructed in 1977 within its Main Alley tech campus. For more than a decade, the building housed a major part of Hootsuite’s headquarters office presence in the Mount Pleasant Industrial Area.

As a transformation of an existing building, Westbank intended for M3 to become Telus’ first new AI data centre in Vancouver, with an initial launch in late 2026 and a gradual expansion through 2028. At full buildout, the 77,000 sq. ft. data centre would occupy all of the building’s office floors and two underground parking levels. A new ground-level restaurant would also be added to better serve the area’s large concentration of office workers.

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In mid-May 2026, Westbank and Telus jointly announced two proposed AI data centres in Vancouver: the conversion of the M3 building and a much larger, brand-new, purpose-built facility at 150 West Georgia St.

The second proposal for the Downtown Vancouver site would replace Westbank’s previously approved plan for an office tower next to BC Place Stadium, at the southeast corner of the intersection of West Georgia and Beatty streets. The building would be constructed directly above the site’s Creative Energy steam plant, which would be expanded and upgraded. Excess heat generated by the data centre would be transferred into the steam system to help provide hot water and space heating to more than 200 buildings across the Downtown Vancouver peninsula.

Although a rezoning application for M3 was first submitted in September 2025, Westbank has not yet filed an application for the substantially more complex and larger proposal to construct a new building at 150 West Georgia St. and integrate it with the Creative Energy plant.

During Tuesday’s City Council meeting, ABC city councillor Lisa Dominato initially introduced an urgent member motion to reschedule the M3 rezoning application’s public hearing. It was later determined, however, that the best first step would be to rescind the earlier decision referring the application to a public hearing.

m3 main alley ai data centre westbank telus 111 East 5th Avenue 2060 Quebec Street vancouver 1

Artistic rendering of the Telus AI data centre at Main Alley tech campus’ M3 building at 111 East 5th Ave. and 2060 Quebec St., Vancouver. (WZMH Architects/Telus/Westbank)

111 east 5th avenue vancouver m3 main tech alley telus ai data centre westbank

Artistic rendering of the Telus AI data centre at Main Alley tech campus’ M3 building at 111 East 5th Ave. and 2060 Quebec St., Vancouver. (WZMH Architects/Telus/Westbank)

Keeping the rezoning application formally referred to a public hearing would have placed elected municipal officials seeking re-election under a communications blackout — preventing them from publicly discussing the proposal during the forthcoming civic election campaign.

Reversing the referral does not approve or reject the rezoning application. Instead, it returns the proposal to City staff to resume the active application review stage, allowing elected officials to communicate with residents and the applicant. They are still technically advised to keep an open mind and avoid taking a definitive position before any eventual public hearing.

But the move potentially turns the AI data centre proposal into a campaign issue ahead of the civic election on Oct. 17, 2026.

The decision to defer the public hearing and decision was driven by both the proposal’s unusually high level of public interest and concerns that City Council would not have enough time to hear from all registered public speakers.

City Council must also consider numerous other rezoning applications, including major development proposals, as well as consequential new policies. The City’s controversial Villages Plan alone has attracted more than 340 registered public speakers, which first began on July 14 and could take a total of three public hearing dates or more to fully complete.

As of Tuesday afternoon, City Council still had to hear from more than 1,000 registered public speakers across a wide range of agenda items, with the speakers for the Villages Plan and the M3 project accounting for more than half of the number of people who signed up to speak to elected officials.

City Council is running the great risk of not having enough time to complete all of its remaining agenda items before the summer break, as only a handful of City Council meetings remain before the end of July, including several public hearings and regular meetings.

Each year, City Council and City staff take a break beginning in early August and continuing until early or mid-September. This year is also different from a typical year because the break overlaps with the municipal election campaign period.

The approximately six-week period beginning in early August is when many City staff members and elected officials schedule their annual summer vacations. City Council cannot simply convene additional meetings to deliberate and make decisions, as regular meetings and public hearings also require the presence of the City clerk’s staff, City lawyers, senior City staff, and other City staff responsible and with knowledge over the topical matters being considered.

The extremely busy schedule during the final days of July is also why the ABC-led majority on City Council cancelled the final Standing Committee on Policy and Strategic Priorities meeting scheduled for July 29.

However, some opposition city councillors called the cancellation “undemocratic,” arguing that it removed their final opportunity to introduce member motions before the end of the term. Such motions could also be highly time-consuming, with at least one city councillor suggesting they were preparing to introduce as many as five motions.

As of Tuesday afternoon, before the decision was made to remove the application from the list of agenda items in Thursday’s public hearing, the M3 AI data centre rezoning application had generated almost 600 written submissions from members of the public and nearly 200 registered public speakers ahead of Thursday’s scheduled public hearing. Hearing from all of those speakers could potentially require several days of public hearings.

City Council also directed City staff to conduct further public consultation on the rezoning application.

However, City staff said no additional public consultation would take place between August and October, which falls during the election campaign period, meaning engagement would not resume until after the election. Renewed consultation would likely occur in November and December 2026, with the application potentially returning to City Council for referral to a public hearing in the first quarter of 2027 at the earliest.

Existing condition of the M3 office building at 111 East 5th Ave., Vancouver. (Kenneth Chan)

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Existing condition of the M3 office building at 111 East 5th Ave., Vancouver. (Kenneth Chan)

Since Westbank and Telus announced the AI data centre projects this past spring, there have been several large protests and marches opposing the proposals. Demonstrators have raised concerns about their potential environmental impacts, as well as the broader expansion of artificial intelligence at the expense of human jobs.

Opponents say the Telus and Westbank facilities would use enormous amounts of electricity and water, generate substantial heat, and potentially create constant industrial noise.

Critics also question whether the AI data centres would create enough permanent jobs or public benefits to justify using valuable urban land and a significant amount of BC Hydro’s electricity supply. They argue that the facilities would provide the computing power needed to expand AI systems capable of replacing workers across many industries, while the data centres themselves could create relatively few permanent jobs.

telus ai data centre facility 150 west georgia street vancouver westbank

2026 concept of the 10-storey Telus AI data centre at 150 West Georgia St., Vancouver. (Westbank/Telus)

However, the two proposed Vancouver facilities — along with a third Telus project in Kamloops — form part of the Government of Canada’s Enabling Large-Scale Sovereign AI Data Centres initiative.

The initiative is intended to strengthen Canada’s domestic AI infrastructure and reduce the reliance of Canadian governments, businesses, universities, institutions, researchers, and other organizations on foreign AI data centres, which can present significant national security risks.

According to Telus, the full three-location AI data centre project in British Columbia could generate approximately $9 billion in provincial economic activity, while creating more than 1,000 construction jobs and hundreds of long-term technology and operations positions.

Telus also maintains that the technology used in the facilities would be substantially more environmentally friendly than that of conventional data centres, requiring only a small fraction of the electricity and water.

Furthermore, the proposed purpose-built AI data centre at 150 West Georgia St. could produce enough recovered heat through its connection to the Creative Energy steam plant to provide the equivalent heating needs of approximately 150,000 homes.

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