Dans “The Globe and Mail”, un Montréalais expatrié à Los Angeles, raconte comment sa casquette des Expos provoque des rencontres et une complicité inattendue.

© Photo eric molina/Montrealaholic/Wikimedia Commons/CC

L’annonce de l’implantation prochaine d’un immense centre de données de Meta destiné à l’intelligence artificielle en Alberta provoque déjà la controverse au Canada. Citoyens et écologistes montent au créneau, alors que des projets similaires ont déjà été stoppés ou rejetés dans le pays.

© META/REUTERS

Meta will build its first Canadian data center in Alberta, investing $9 billion in a 1-gigawatt facility that can scale to 1.8 gigawatts to support its AI infrastructure needs. The project will rely on new generation and grid infrastructure funded by Meta, including a long-term agreement tied to a new natural gas power facility. The company says it will offset electricity use with clean and renewable energy investments. Reuters reports: Meta has doubled down on AI, pledging hundreds of billions of dollars to build large AI data centers in the U.S. The Alberta announcement represents the company's 33rd data center globally. Executives made the announcement in Calgary alongside Premier Danielle Smith and other Alberta government officials, who have spent several years courting Silicon Valley tech giants with the aim of spurring a large-scale investment in the oil-and-gas province. Alberta's technology minister, Nate Glubish, told reporters there are currently several other gigawatt-scale data center proposals in various stages of development in the province. "This is the first of its kind, the first of its size, the first of its scale, but it won't be the last," Glubish said. Meta, like other tech giants, is facing rapidly expanding power needs due to the growth of AI, and Alberta is rich in natural gas which sells at a significant discount to the U.S. benchmark. The province's cold climate also makes cooling the massive super-computers and related data center infrastructure more cost-efficient. The 20 existing small- to mid-scale data centers in Alberta already pull from the province's energy grid, which is 60% powered by natural gas. The provincial government is giving new proponents the option to build their own power sources to avoid limits on power capacity. Meta said Wednesday it will fully fund new generation and grid infrastructure for its Alberta data center, which will consume about as much electricity as 800,000 homes. Gary Demasi, Meta's vice president for data center development, said the company will offset that electricity use by investing in clean and renewable energy. He also said the data center will use a closed-loop liquid cooling system, meaning its total water use will be less than that of a typical golf course. [...] The company has partnered with Alberta-based Pembina Pipeline , which announced last week it will go ahead with its Greenlight Electricity Centre, a new natural gas-fired power-generation facility in Sturgeon County which will be in service in late 2030 and with which Meta has a long-term tolling agreement. Until that project is operational and for the next decade, Alberta-based power producer Capital Power will provide 250 megawatts of electricity for the site using its existing natural gas-fired fleet. The project will require approximately 150 million cubic feet per day of natural gas, according to Pembina, helping to create demand for Western Canadian natural gas producers.

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Alors que la baisse démographique se poursuit au Canada, le spectre des pénuries d’emplois fait réagir les deux plus importantes provinces du pays, l’Ontario et le Québec. Une expatriée française vient d’en faire les frais.

© Photo Lee Smith / REUTERS

Un sort incertain attend une statue récemment retirée, après avoir été vandalisée, du père de la Nouvelle-France, dont l’héritage colonial est dénoncé par des Autochtones. Le débat autour du monument érigé en 1925 à la gloire de l’explorateur français Samuel de Champlain, fondateur de Québec, a gagné “tout le pays”, selon la presse locale.

© CTV News

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A report from Canada's Transportation Safety Board has highlighted regulatory failures that allowed OceanGate's unregistered, unflagged, and uncertified Titan submersible to operate out St. John's, Newfoundland, for years before it imploded on a tourist trip to the wreck of the Titanic in 2023. "When it came to the Titan, critical information existed across multiple federal government organizations, but no one was responsible for connecting the dots," says TBS chair Yoan Marier in a statement. "Without a complete picture of the operation, the Titan continued to operate in Canada without regulatory oversight." [...] As OceanGate continued to operate from St. John's in 2021 and 2022, the Titan made successful dives to the Titanic and several sites within Canadian waters. The company eventually interacted with a total of 10 Canadian federal agencies, including Parks Canada, the Department of National Defense, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. But the company's operations were never directly reported to the team responsible for marine safety. "In terms of the actual people that were responsible for marine oversight, their focus was on the Canadian support vessel," says TSB investigator Jason Melvin. While TSB investigators did not have access to the wreckage of the Titan itself, which remains with the US Coast Guard, they did analyze portions of the carbon fiber left over from its manufacture. They calculated that a hull made to OceanGate's exact specifications might have been able to make hundreds of millions of dives to Titanic depths before failing. However, the composite samples as built had porosity and waviness between layers and were ground down in a way that might have introduced defects. When the TSB tested the compressive strength of the carbon fiber, it indicated the material could fail in as few as 30 deep dives. [...] The TSB is recommending increased oversight of the riskiest vessels and improvements in information sharing between departments, and is requiring that all human-occupied submersibles be subject to international construction and safety standards.

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Canada's broadcast regulator says major streaming services such as Netflix must contribute 15% of their Canadian revenues to Canadian and Indigenous content. "That's three times the five-per-cent initial contribution requirement the CRTC set out in 2024, which is being challenged in court by major streamers, including Apple and Amazon," reports Global News. "Contribution requirements for traditional broadcasters, which currently pay between 30 and 45 percent, will be lowered to 25 percent." From the report: "The total contributions are expected to stabilize the funding at more than $2 billion in support of Canadian and Indigenous content, such as French-language content and news," the regulator said in a press release. The CRTC made the decisions as part of its implementation of the Online Streaming Act, which the U.S. has identified as a trade irritant ahead of trade negotiations with Canada. The CRTC also set out rules on how the money must be spent for both streamers and broadcasters, including contributions toward production funds and direct spending on Canadian content. Most of the streamers' financial contributions can go toward content, though the CRTC is imposing rules on how that money must be spent for the largest streamers. For instance, streamers with Canadian revenues of more than $100 million annually must direct 30 percent of spending toward partnerships with Canadian broadcasters and independent producers. Large Canadian broadcasters will have to direct at least 15 percent of their contributions toward news. The new financial contribution rules apply to streamers and broadcasters with at least $25 million in annual Canadian broadcasting revenues. The decision covers audiovisual programming, meaning it affects traditional TV broadcasters and online services that stream television content. The regulator also said Thursday online streamers will have to take steps to ensure Canadian and Indigenous content is available and visible to audiences. "This will make it easier for people to find this content on the platforms they use, while giving broadcasters flexibility in how they meet the new expectations," the CRTC said in the release. Details of those requirements will be determined at a later time.

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