O’Leary says Alberta pitched AI data centre to him

In his quest to bring a $70 billion AI data centre to northern Alberta – the man known as “Mr. wonderful”, Kevin O’Leary, says Alberta’s premier has been wonderful.

“All of this is happening simultaneously with support of what I would call a visionary leader in Danielle Smith,” said O’Leary. “This site was originally going to be a refinery.”

Canadian-born businessman O’Leary –told CityNews in an interview Friday — it was someone in the United Conservative Party who initially brought him the idea.

 “I received a call, months and months ago, from somebody in her party and they said, ‘listen, why aren’t you bringing any of these developments to Alberta, we’ve got fantastic metrics,” said O’Leary.

O’Leary says he was skeptical he could get the permits – but Smith reassured him.

“We set up a call with her staffers and her and she said, ‘look, I won a court case, a litigation against Gerald Butts in October of 2023, where I got back my rights and I can issue permits for projects like this in province,” said O’Leary.

O’Leary publicly announced “wonder valley” – south of Grande Prairie – in early December. About a month later – he invited Smith to meet Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

“I had to take Danielle Smith to sovereign wealth funds around the world,” said O’Leary. “ I had to take her to Washington and I took her to Mar-a-Lago. We had to go convince people that Canada is open for business again, at least Alberta is. Cause no one believes it.”

Citynews’ asked the premier’s office to confirm details of the deal, including if Alberta is offering any tax breaks or subsidies, but her press secretary did not respond to repeated inquiries.

Lori Williams a political scientist at Mount Royal University, believes the government needs to provide more information.

“There are lots of questions about who is investing under what conditions,” said Williams. “Is this for the benefit of Albertans? How much government money is involved here. Is it a wise, realistic, investment and has it gone through a fair process.”

Not everyone was immediately on board with wonder valley.

Sheldon sunshine — the chief of Sturgeon Lake Cree nation – told CityNews last week his community was not consulted at all. They sent a cease-and-desist letter to Smith.

O’Leary says he’s happy to bring the first nation in on the project.

“We want them to be a part of it, though,” said O’Leary. “ We want to find out how they want to be engaged, what they want to do. Would they like jobs in this? In the construction phase or the engineering side, they just have to tell us what direction they’d like to pursue and we’re listening.”

Sturgeon Lake confirms the O’Leary group will be visiting their community on Tuesday – but Chief Sunshine says Alberta has still not reached out.

The office of Alberta’s premier responded with a statement to this story: