Bell Canada's AI Data Centre Propaganda Machine Has Kicked Into Gear

And it just spun out its first false narrative. My question is this: if the project is so amazing, why spread misinformation?

Due to the extraordinary level of public interest in the issue, I’m going to publish pieces on the Bell Canada AI Data Centre without a paywall. A huge thank you to those who shared and posted my first piece on this in public forums and on their socials - please feel free to do so again. No amount of propaganda can bury the manner in which this project was rammed through. This conversation is going to matter to Saskatchewan people for a long time - it has to, or we’ve lost all semblance of democracy.

“Bell Engages Saskatchewan Contractors for Early Phases of 300MW AI Data Centre Build”

So reads the headline of a May 4, 2026 media release issued by Bell Canada, otherwise known as BCE Inc, in respect to the contentious and gargantuan construction project that has ignited the fury of Saskatchewan people in ways not seen in a very long time.

Let’s dig into it, shall we?

The release opens with the same assumption that’s been floated as fact now by both BCE and the Sask Party, without a shred of evidence: the Data Centre will “support hundreds of skilled trades and engineering jobs in the Regina region and deliver long-term economic benefits across the province.”

No. Evidence.

Next up is what I read as a big bird flip to the RM of Sherwood, and/or those opposed to the speed of the project’s non-existent approval process:

“Early site works commenced on April 21 after the development agreement for the project was approved by the Rural Municipality of Sherwood on April 20…”

From zero to site works in one day, bitches. Eat that.

Also - how dare you even suggest there was a predetermined outcome here?

Obviously those giant earth movers and the companies requiring major planning to get started on a project like this were just coincidentally hanging out in the area, ready to mobilize at the drop of a hat.

The RM council that approved this project unanimously, mind you, included four interim appointees hand-picked by the Sask Party after several elected councillors abruptly resigned in March. The doors were locked to the public that night. Hundreds of protesters stood outside, banging on windows and honking horns. One delegate was removed from the building.

And the day after the vote, the heavy equipment was already rolling.

But sure. Very organic process.

The release then floats more unsupported claims about Saskatchewan jobs, the economy, and twelve billion dollars in investment

A figure which, it’s worth noting, Bell itself describes as “economic value projected to generate over time.” In other words - a projection of a projection, attached to no specific timeline, no methodology, and no accountability whatsoever.

And now for the main event, under the heading ‘Supporting local trades and businesses’, we find ourselves embedded in three paragraphs that kick off with the notion that:

“…a significant portion of that construction spend and the jobs it will support flows directly to Saskatchewan businesses and workers…” - BCE Inc.

First, what “construction spend”? The only dollar amount mentioned in this release was $12-billion, and was allocated to “long-term economic value,” a term so vague it means nothing at all.

We’ve already been told the actual construction cost is $1.7 billion, which is mostly made up of American hardware, but that number or fact isn’t mentioned in BCE’s release.

In fact, Bell goes on to insist that the:

“…engagement of local and regional contractors reflects a deliberate procurement strategy: keep capacity, skills and tax base in the province where the infrastructure sits and build sovereign AI infrastructure with a sovereign supply chain.”

My, my, my: a “deliberate” strategy!

Such lofty, if not dystopian, goals.

A “sovereign AI infrastructure with a sovereign supply chain,” built by a French multinational, a Swiss spin-off, and a BC company whose “Saskatoon office” is a virtual desk.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

”With the dedicated work of this local team, Bell has already made strong progress on site.”

Great.

Let’s meet the team, shall we?

Reminder: “Bell Engages Saskatchewan Contractors for Early Phases of 300MW AI Data Centre Build” is the title of this news release.

Here’s a screenshot of what it brings next:

And now, we fact check.

Hipperson Construction is indeed a Saskatchewan company, almost as old as Saskatchewan itself. Founded in 1906, it’s so Saskatchewan that its been introduced in the Legislature twice - once in 2014, and once in 2015 - both times by former Sask Party MLA Russ Marchuk.

The first time was to acknowledge the company’s 108th anniversary, which is recognition-worthy, if not a rather random number to commemorate. The second time was to acknowledge that Hipperson Construction was owned by Marchuk’s “wife’s family.”

Nothing to see here, just Saskatchewan being Saskatchewan.

Maxie’s Excavating is also from Saskatchewan. Founded in 1972, it’s been operating out of Saskatoon for over 40 years.

According to its highlight page on Sask Party stalwart Grant Kook’s Westcap Management’s website: “Maxie’s is a long-standing brand in Saskatchewan that is well known.”

Okie doke.

In 2019, Westcap announced it had “closed the second investment transaction for the Westcap MBO II Investment LP management buyout of Maxie’s Excavating LP in syndication with Golden Opportunities Fund Inc Retail Venture Capital (RVC) Fund, a total of $17.84 million in aggregate.”

Cool cool cool. Glad to know someone could help Westcap Management out with a Saskatchewan contract. It’s about time the provincial government gave the little guy a leg up.

Ardel Steel, founded in 1980, is headquartered in Regina, with a branch in Saskatoon.

WaterMark Consulting also seems genuinely local. Their work on well-water monitoring makes sense for a project that required acoustic and water assessments as conditions of RM approval.

That’s four. The release listed eight. Let’s keep going.

“Soletanche Bachy Canada (Regina, Saskatchewan)”

This one sounds local - fingers crossed!

Just kidding.

Soletanche Bachy is a multinational monolith headquartered in Rueil-Malmaison, France, operating in approximately 60 countries. It was acquired by VINCI, the French construction and concessions giant, and operates as a specialized geotechnical subsidiary of VINCI Construction.

You know, the same VINCI that holds the 30-year design-build-finance-operate-maintain contract on the Regina Bypass?

The VINCI to which billions of your tax dollars have already been paid, while no one drives on its pavement?

Yeah, that VINCI.

It’s almost charming how incestuous Saskatchewan can be.

Almost.

As for their presence: the address listed for Soletanche Bachy Canada’s Saskatchewan office is… an acreage. It’s on their public website, but I’m not going to link to it because it is clearly someone’s home.

ISC’s corporate registry confirms Soletanche Bachy Canada as an extra-provincial corporation, incorporated in Ontario, Canada.

An extra-provincial corporation is a federal company registered in one Canadian province that has registered to also operate in a different province.

Which, fair enough: they’re literally operating here right now. But listing this European megacorp as “(Regina, Saskatchewan)” in a news release headlined “Saskatchewan Contractors” is absolutely misleading.

Amrize is the brand name for Holcim’s North American building materials business, spun off as an independent public company in June 2025. Holcim is one of the largest building materials companies in the world. Publicly-traded on the NYSE, its operational headquarters are in Chicago, Illinois. Its registered head office is in Zug, Switzerland.

Saskatchewan’s corporate registry lists two entries: Amrize Building Envelope Canada, which is a Business Name registered in Saskatchewan by Amrize Canada Inc, which is an MRAS Corporation registered in Ontario.

MRAS stands for Multi-jurisdictional Registry Access Service, a digital hub created during COVID that lets companies register across provincial lines more efficiently.

Registering a business name is not the same as registering a business. A MRAS Corporation is registered in a province; it is not from that province.

Amrize has supplied concrete and aggregates across Western Canada for decades, and they have physical operations here. But using “Amrize (Regina, Saskatchewan)” as a framing device in a national news release, presented alongside homegrown firms like Hipperson and Ardel, is doing a lot of heavy lifting that the facts don’t support.

Red Pelican Building Science Ltd. is a building energy modeling firm. The corporate registry shows it also as an MRAS Corporation, incorporated in British Columbia.

Red Pelican’s own website lists three offices: Calgary, Langley (BC), and Saskatoon. Their Saskatoon address, according to their website, is 111-2nd Avenue South, Unit 400, Saskatoon, SK, S7K 1K6.

That is the address of Regus, a global coworking and virtual office chain.

The British Columbia office is clearly Red Pelican’s primary base of operations.

So, wtf does “local” actually mean to Bell Canada and its Super-Sovereign AI Data Centre?

Of the eight companies listed in the release, only four are registered as Saskatchewan entities. This matters for a reason Bell Canada explicitly stated in this news release: keeping “tax base in the province.”

Corporate taxes in Canada are paid in the province where a company is legally domiciled and where its profits are generated, not where a contract job is executed. When a French multinational’s Canadian subsidiary does a job in Saskatchewan, that profit flows to France, just like it did for the Regina Bypass.

When a Swiss-headquartered public company supplies concrete, the earnings are reported in Chicago and Zug. Sure, the workers they hire may pay income tax here - we don’t know. But the corporate tax argument, the one Bell put front and centre in its own narrative, is substantially undercut by their own contractor list.

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There’s also a plain English distinction between having a physical presence in a place and being from a place.

A corporation “operating in Saskatchewan” and a “Saskatchewan contractor” are different things.

One is a description of geography.

The other is a claim of identity, loyalty, roots: which is precisely the emotional resonance Bell’s PR team was going for.

Words matter.

That’s why when it comes to this project, everyone is parsing them.

Buried further in the release is an extended section on George Gordon First Nation, with whom Bell signed a partnership agreement focused on “Indigenous procurement participation and workforce development.”

To be clear, George Gordon’s connection to this specific data centre is that it owns land across the road from the site, which it acquired in 2019.

The partnership is framed in the release as if it were a substantive governance relationship.

It is not.

Bell says it held its “inaugural meeting” with the Workforce Steering Committee alongside George Gordon Developments Ltd.

The performative Indigenous engagement here is throttled to the max.

Chief Shawn Longman expressed genuine enthusiasm for what it might bring his community, and I don’t really doubt his sincerity, but Bell ginning its relationship with a Saskatchewan First Nation as paragraph filler in a media release about contractors is, at minimum, a stretch.

The photos accompanying BCE’s news release tell a story of their own.

April 21, the day after the RM of Sherwood’s “approval” meeting: a wide, bare field beginning to be displaced.

Bell Canada media release, May 4, 2026

April 22: continued earthworks, the Regina skyline visible in the distance, excavators moving earth 48 hours after the RM vote.

For scale on what they accomplished literally overnight, one day after receiving approval to start - look at the trucks in both the above and below photos.

And then: April 30, “with initial construction of sound barriers at the property edge.”

Let’s back up.

Indeed, the development agreement between BCE and the RM of Sherwood contains a specific acoustic condition: Bell must conduct pre- and post-project acoustic assessments to ensure noise levels do not exceed 70 dB at the property boundary.

In other words, the sound barrier requirement was baked into the deal from the beginning as a condition of approval the public was never formally consulted on, that BCE’s news release dropped into a photo caption without explanation, that sailed past every media outlet that ran the story without so much as a glance backwards.

A data centre this size generates continuous mechanical noise - a vibrating hum, so to speak - from cooling systems, fans, and HVAC equipment. The noise is constant, around the clock, every day, and will be for the 30-year life of the facility.

This is not new information.

With that, let’s look at how Saskatchewan media corporations covered this news release, which they all received at the exact same time on May 4, 2026.

It’s worth remembering, before we start, that the Saskatchewan Party is the single largest advertising client for every media outlet in this province except the CBC - and it’s not even close. Add up the ministries, Crown corporations (think about SGI and SaskTel), the Saskatchewan Health Authority, Crop Insurance Corporation and other ag programs, etc.: the Saskatchewan Party-controlled combined media spend dwarfs any other advertiser in the province.

I can’t give you the exact amounts per media outlet. Despite clear provincial legislation, including the Elections Saskatchewan Act, that state these dollar amounts must be provided to the public on a per company basis, the Sask Party hides their advertising purchases by funnelling them through communications companies willing to obscure the spending of those tax dollars from their owners: you.

That’s a different post for a different day, but shame on them.

What I know for sure is that without Sask Party advertising, Postmedia would not be printing papers in Saskatchewan. In fact, arguably no publisher would be, including the two sitting Sask Party MLAs who each own one.

Terry Jenson (MLA for Warman, Minister of Social Services) owns the Clark’s Crossing Gazette and is a past president of the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association. Kevin Weedmark (MLA for Moosomin-Montmartre) was owner and editor of the Moosomin World-Spectator until his election in 2024; now his wife Kara allegedly runs it.

Without the Sask Party, no privately-owned AM/FM radio company would still exist in Saskatchewan.

In the case of Rawlco Radio, owned by Doug and Gord Rawlinson, and Harvard Broadcasting, owned by Paul Hill and his Hill Companies, there are reciprocally significant political donations flowing back to the Saskatchewan Party.

Rawlco has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Sask Party since 2005 - a ratio that speaks for itself. In 2023 alone, Rawlco Capital Ltd. and Rawlco Radio Ltd. together contributed over $13,000 to the party. Harvard Media’s political posture has been similarly aligned.

Rawlco ran a cut-and-paste copy of the Bell Canada news release on both their Saskatoon CKOM and Regina CJME websites. Both sites ran the photos including the one captioned “initial construction of sound barriers at the property edge” and flowed right past it without a raised eyebrow or a follow-up question.

No inquiry into why sounds barriers were needed on day nine.

Just the release, republished, with a byline.

Harvard Media, part of Paul Hill’s 121-year-old Hill Companies, acquired SaskToday.ca from Glacier Media in March 2024. The stated rationale: fill the vacuum left by retreating Toronto-based publishers in rural Saskatchewan.

The unstated rationale: confidence in government ad revenue makes the purchase of media assets in a collapsing market a real easy decision.

SaskToday also dutifully ran the news release, more or less verbatim.

Not one of those outlets questioned or challenged any of the concepts put forward in the news release - just accepted and ran it as a “good news” story.

The Regina Leader-Post did a story - sharper than most, they used their own photography, which is notably less flattering to the project than Bell’s drone images. They showed some signs of critical thinking.

Yet the story describes Soletanche Bachy Canada, Ardel Steel and Amrize as companies that are “headquartered or have firms in Regina.”

One of those facts is accurate (Ardel Steel). One is a company headquartered in France and has an address that involves an acreage nowhere near Regina (Soletanche Bachy). One has its operational headquarters in Chicago (Amrize). The word “firms” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

As we’ve established, “Saskatoon’s Red Pelican”, per the Leader-Post’s framing, is actually a British Columbian company.

CTV News, which is owned by BCE, the same corporate parent as Bell Canada, covered the story, as it must.

When CTV Regina reports on the AI Data Centre, it is, structurally speaking, writing a memo to its own bosses. Every story is an inherent conflict at every level. They acknowledge this with a short, standard disclosure line at the bottom of the story.

What they chose to do with language is revealing: Bell, said CTV, had “highlighted eight Prairie-based companies.”

“Prairie-based…”

Quaint, but clearly inaccurate.

CTV tried to solve a problem they immediately recognized in the news release: how do you call these “local” companies without actually saying “local”?

You reach for an adjective broad enough to technically include France.

Global News, owned by Rogers, Bell Canada’s direct competitor, didn’t cover this news release. There’s an obvious awkwardness in reporting critically on a competitor’s major project when your own parent company competes in the same space.

CBC, as of this writing, has not yet reported on the May 4 BCE Inc. news release either.

That gives me some hope.

Maybe someone there noticed the sound barriers were already going up.

Maybe they clocked the “deliberate strategy” language and thought: deliberate is right, but for whom?

Maybe the public broadcaster is actually doing what it’s there to do.

Or maybe they’re just late.

Either way, I’m watching.

Again, the headline of the news release was “Bell Engages Saskatchewan Contractors...”

Half of the ones they listed were not from Saskatchewan.

Deception: that’s the deliberate strategy.

The “sovereign supply chain” does not run through the RM of Sherwood, or even Saskatchewan.

At the end of the day, this isn’t just a story about one AI data centre or one very creative news release.

It’s a story about how easily a handful of powerful corporations and a friendly majority provincial government can rewrite basic facts — local becomes “Prairie-based,” global multinationals become “Saskatchewan contractors,” and locked council chambers become “public consultation.”

If we let that slide because the building is shiny and the ad buys are big, we’re telling them we’re fine with being talked to like we’re idiots - cause they must think we’re pretty f*cking stupid to try to sell us this nonsense.

Saskatchewan people are not stupid.

We know the difference between work done here and wealth built and retained here.

We know the difference between a partnership and a photo-op, between journalism and sponsored content, between development and a democratic steamroll.

The point of me laying all this out isn’t to win a word game with Bell’s comms team or condemn the companies involved with the project. That said, at least a couple of those small inter-provincial “firms” had best think about why they’d allow one of the biggest media shops in the country to misrepresent their background.

No, the point of my following of this shitstorm is to make sure that the next time the Sask Party government and its corporate friends try to run a train like this at warp speed over Saskatchewan residents, they hit something they didn’t plan for: a province full of people who are paying attention, asking hard questions, and refusing to play along with the spin.

If you’d like to ensure this works exists in the long-term, etransfers are gratefully accepted at tammyrobert0123@gmail.com or by using the donation button below. Thank you.