Open for signatureElectronice-7817 · Parliament 45

Establish national DataGuide framework

Sign on the House of Commons website

Petitioners ask the Government of Canada to establish a national DataGuide framework for large data centres, with an EnerGuide-style public label, a standardized computing-capacity metric, and rules for issuance, display, renewal and independent verification.

Why we would sign this petition

  • It would give the public a clear, comparable label showing who owns and operates large data centres and what resources and benefits they deliver.
  • A standardized computing-capacity metric would let communities and policymakers compare facilities and weigh capacity against resource consumption.
  • Federal standards for display, renewal and independent verification would improve accountability and help ensure reported information stays current and reliable.

Why we wouldn’t sign this petition

  • Implementing and maintaining a national labelling system could impose significant costs and administrative burdens on operators and government.
  • A single metric may oversimplify diverse facilities, distorting comparisons between different technologies, scales or uses.
  • Requiring detailed public reporting could expose proprietary, security-sensitive or commercially strategic information, raising legal and competitiveness concerns.

The summary and both sets of reasons are AI-generated from the petition and given equal weight. Claims are the petitioners’ own; consult the official record for the full text.

Official petition

Petition to the Government of Canada The rapid development of artificial intelligence is driving significant investment in large data centres, creating growing demands for electricity, water, land and public infrastructure; Canadians lack a standardized means of understanding and comparing how large data centres use their computing capacity, the purposes they serve, who owns, operates, and controls them, the resources they consume, and their measurable economic and public benefits; and The Government of Canada is facilitating the development of this infrastructure and has established principles for responsible data centre development, yet there is no standardized national framework for publicly reporting and comparing individual facilities. We, the undersigned, citizens and residents of Canada, call upon the Government of Canada to establish a national "DataGuide" framework for large data centres, including: 1. A standardized, visually distinctive public-facing label, similar in principle to EnerGuide, enabling Canadians to readily understand and compare a facility’s ownership, operation and control, purpose, resource consumption, computing capacity, and measurable economic and public benefits; 2. A standardized metric for expressing and comparing their computing capacity, in terms that permit meaningful comparison among comparable facilities and against their resource consumption; and 3. Federal standards for the issuance, public display, regular renewal, and independent verification of DataGuide information throughout their operating lives.

Government response

No government response is available yet.