AI Covenants without Human Swords

Data centre projects are drawing real opposition across the country, and it isn't hard to see why. Rising electricity costs get passed on to ratepayers, water-hungry cooling systems strain local supplies, and communities feel like decisions are being made about them rather than with them. That's the backdrop against which Ottawa introduced the Responsible Data Centre Development Principles on September 3: an attempt to reassure Canadians that this build-out will happen on terms that protect them.

The trouble is that a signature alone won't do that. The principles are five voluntary commitments, signed by 23 companies including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Bell, and Telus, and none of them carry any enforcement. AI Minister Evan Solomon has been explicit that the framework doesn't replace or override provincial and municipal approval processes; it sits alongside them as an expectation, not a requirement. A company can sign this framework in Markham, quietly walk away from every commitment in it, and face nothing for doing so.

The missing sword

English philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously had a name for this kind of arrangement: a covenant without a sword. He argued that a promise between equals binds nobody unless someone holds the power to punish whoever breaks it. That's the plain reason these principles won't hold on their own, and it's the reason I think Prime Minister Mark Carney's government should step back and add the enforcement mechanism currently missing from them, not retreat from the project itself.

Environmental Defence has already said something similar. They called the framework a starting point and argued that the loopholes need to be closed through regulation, not principles. They point to Alberta, where roughly 30 proposed data centres could double provincial electricity demand and add tens of megatonnes of emissions a year, the rough equivalent of putting five million more cars on the road.

Alberta's own data centre enablement effort is the combination of 2025's Bills 8 and 12. Bill 8, the Utilities Statutes Amendment Act, lets data centres power themselves. The Bill 12 levy, the Financial Statutes Amendment Act, 2025 (No. 2), only applies in full to projects still drawing from the public grid, so the largest developments can simply build their own gas plants and skip it.

Real regulation, not a voluntary principle, is what keeps environmental reviews from being quietly waved through for projects moving fast enough to outrun scrutiny, and that protection is worth building in now rather than after the first project tests it.

I understand the instinct to call the principles a step in the right direction, and they very much are. This is the first time Ottawa has put a national standard on paper for data centre development, and every signatory now has something concrete to be measured against, even informally. But a step only counts if there's a second one behind it. The honest question isn't whether these are good words. It's whether the federal government is also willing to become the sword.

Room to add teeth without filing them down

None of this requires Ottawa to override the provinces and municipalities that hold most of the actual approval power over these projects. It means using every lever that is federal to begin with. Ottawa still sets the rules for foreign investment review and controls how it funds AI infrastructure.

Ottawa can also use funding and standing, not just rules, to strengthen the provinces and municipalities that already hold jurisdiction here. Tie sovereign AI infrastructure funding to a province's own enforcement regime instead of a signature on a voluntary framework. Give municipalities and Indigenous rights holders explicit standing to say no to a project that breaks the principles, not just a seat at a consultation. That's federal power used to enable stronger local decisions, not federal power used to override them.

Companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI built their Canadian businesses extracting value from Canadian data and Canadian users. Our sovereignty and capacity to support a good quality of life hinges on our ability to ensure that these companies contribute rather than just draw. We have already shown a willingness to bend thhe knee in this area by trading away the Digital Services Tax. We can't let the principle that Big Tech must contribute, not just extract, wither the next time trade negotiations with the Orange Menace get tense. That may have once been the price of keeping broader trade talks alive, but it shouldn't be allowed to set a precedent that goes soft on Big Tech.

I want Canada to build sovereign AI infrastructure, and I want Prime Minister Carney to succeed at doing it right. That's exactly why I am choosing to accept the current framework as progress, albeit not quite the level of progress it is being heralded as. A promise this important deserves better than good intentions with no consequences attached. Minister Solomon says these principles will ensure companies build responsibly and transparently. I'd like to see that promise backed by something sharper than a signature. This AI covenant just needs a human sword.