CALGARY — Kevin O’Leary’s massive Wonder Valley AI data centre continues to ignite controversy as it has been revealed that an Alberta municipality agreed to negotiate the sale of the land for the facility before changing its land-use rules through a six-minute public hearing where there was no mention of the project.According to documents reviewed by Canada’s National Observer, the Municipal District of Greenview left residents with little opportunity to challenge the proposal.O’Leary — a prominent Canadian businessman and television personality — has promoted Wonder Valley as the world’s largest AI data centre, which would be located roughly 40 kilometres south of Grande Prairie, cover approximately 65 square kilometres, have a price tag of $70 billion, and feature up to 9 gigawatts of on-site generation capacity.The project would require enormous amounts of electricity, much of it expected to come from natural-gas generation.Casey Klein, a Grande Prairie resident and advocate, uncovered the timeline involving decisions on the project after examining 2024 council minutes, a heavily redacted land-sale agreement between the municipality and one of O’Leary’s companies, and internal local government emails obtained through an Access to Information (ATI) request.“Democracy is being hollowed out,” Klein said.“The public-facing process still exists, but the consequential decisions happen somewhere else.”.In the emails, Greenview officials are shown to have been working on plans for a “massive data centre” by September 2024, nearly three months before Wonder Valley was announced publicly.Kyle Reiling, executive director of the Greenview Industrial Gateway (GIG), was arranging surveys for access roads and a roundabout on September 18, 2024.According to Site Selection Magazine, Reiling said around that time that he had a three-hour meeting with Paul Palandijan, CEO and co-founder of O'Leary Digital and co-general partner of O'Leary Ventures, in Calgary.On the same day as that meeting, Palandijan met with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and later asked Carl Agren, an Abu Dhabi-based data centre developer, to join him in Alberta to go over plans for a potential 1,214-hectare site.Greenview’s land-use bylaws did not specifically address data centres at this time, and municipal staff initially recommended allowing them as discretionary uses, meaning each proposal would require individual approval from council and possibly be subject to additional public scrutiny and special conditions.During a closed meeting on October 8, 2024, councillors discussed the proposed data centre rules at a meeting that was closed to the public due to its content possibly being “harmful to the business interests of a third party.”On October 22, 2024, council authorized municipal staff to sign letters of intent with potential GIG purchasers.Court filings from a separate case involving O’Leary Digital show Greenview signed an agreement with one of O’Leary’s companies the same day..Judge rejects Kevin O’Leary-backed data centre bid to halt First Nation challenge.Stacey Wabick, Greenview’s Chief Administrative Officer, said the municipality accepted the letter of intent from one of O’Leary’s companies on October 23, 2024.“Nothing in [the letter of intent] obligated Greenview to sell,” Wabick said, adding that it did not require the municipality to amend its bylaws.However, after the closed October meeting, staff changed their recommendation, now advising that instead of treating data centres as discretionary uses, they should be made permitted uses in industrial districts, meaning Greenview could approve a data centre if it satisfied the municipality’s established requirements.Staff also said the change would remove “undue regulatory hurdles,” noting that data centres are commonly located near power plants, which were already allowed in the municipality.Greenview held a public hearing on the new amendment on November 12, 2024, where information provided to local residents did not mention Wonder Valley despite the municipality’s dealings with O’Leary’s company.The hearing lasted six minutes, during which no one spoke against the change, and council unanimously approved it, 11-0.Wonder Valley was later publicly announced by Greenview and O’Leary on December 9, 2024.“Greenview withheld that information,” Klein said.“They were sitting on the biggest data centre in the world. The deal was signed, yet [Greenview] was making moves to prevent the public from being able to have any say.”This August, Greenview published an information deck saying the municipality hadn’t yet granted any “development approvals” for Wonder Valley because it “has not yet advanced to the development permit stage, and no permit applications have been submitted.”.Smith says Alberta's AI data centres will be built in established industrial areas.Palandijan told Canada’s National Observer that the “consultation itself, that was Greenview’s process” when asked if O’Leary’s companies had misled the public.“[Greenview] convened it, set the agenda and decided what went before residents," he said."We weren’t running it, and we don’t tell a municipal government what to disclose. Greenview has published its own account of that engagement … They can speak for themselves and they have."Since Wonder Valley was announced, it has attracted growing opposition, fuelling protests and lawsuits.In 2025, the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation sued the Alberta government over a water licence connected to the project, alleging the province failed to properly consult the First Nation — a case that remains in court.The Alberta government has also announced plans to designate the Greenview Industrial Gateway as a special industrial zone intended to streamline regulatory processes.Nigel Bankes, an environmental and regulatory law expert at the University of Calgary, questioned whether the designation is more than a “rhetorical statement” because it does not change any of Alberta’s environmental laws, and the provincial environment ministry has already exempted Wonder Valley from an environmental impact assessment.Klein stated that the municipality’s handling of the project, along with the Smith government’s effort to accelerate development, is fuelling more opposition to the project.“That’s why people are up in arms,” she said.“Red tape, to Danielle Smith, is democracy.”
