Regina's mayor talks about city council’s meeting regarding Bell's AI data centre

Regina City Council invited delegates to give their feedback about the Bell AI data center outside of Regina. It was approved by the RM of Sherwood. Four city councillors brought a motion forward to ask the city to look at possible impacts. Time now to speak with Regina's mayor, who was at council yesterday. Mayor, good morning. Good morning. So, Mayor, I want to start off by letting listeners know that you were recusing yourself yesterday from this discussion in council can you sort of explain that and the thought behind it yeah absolutely so i was made aware of uh um some feelings around a potential conflict of interest with my leave of absence from SaskEnergy um and so i sought out proactively to speak to our integrity commissioner uh sought legal independent legal advice um and just given the timing um wanting to dig more into this and get more guidance but just out of an abundance of caution I thought it was prudent to excuse myself from this conversation, and then I'm going to be seeking some more guidance to make sure that I can participate where appropriate on those discussions, just to make sure I fully can kind of connect if there is a connection with that arrangement with that employer. And this would have to do with Sask Energy potentially being involved and down the road, a natural gas connection to a future natural gas facility connected to the data center. Is that correct? Yeah, my understanding is the power plant that would be potentially powered by or fueled by natural gas supplied by Sask Energy. That's my understanding of the connection. So just making sure I dive into that and make sure that by the letter of any kind of guidance or rules that I do the right thing. What were your overall takeaways from the delegations yesterday? Yeah, from watching, I feel that, you know, fair questions. people have questions and i think everybody deserves answers and uh um you know i think the delegations were very um you know professional had very you know clear and fair questions um and i think Bell also came uh professional and gave fair answers and so i think it was actually a good discussion from what i saw um i'm encouraged to hear from Bell uh i thought there was a very very uh openness and willingness from Bell uh to be available to be accessible to answer any and all questions and provide supplemental information to council as well i heard that i think as of today there's going to be a space opening on 11th avenue in regina that anybody can go to and ask bell directly any questions they have around that facility is this something that should have happened months ago given where we're at with this project i think given hindsight i think some of these things uh some of the information some of the the spaces for information um i i think that bell would probably even say given what they've seen from some of the feedback that maybe they have accelerated that or started with some of these parameters um you know i think hindsight for me i think i would like to see that as well that would have maybe helped um not put some of my council members uh feeling like they had to take a role in that um but you know what we are where we are today um i'm encouraged to see that the conversation is happening i'm encouraged to see the way the conversation happened yesterday as well as what's going to happen going forward to share information.