Mississauga Could Pause New AI Data Centres
Matthew Leo · Published July 27, 2026 · Canada Tech
Mississauga may do something governments rarely manage during an infrastructure boom: stop long enough to write the rules first.
City council is expected to vote on July 29 on a proposed one-year pause for new major digital-infrastructure and artificial-intelligence data-centre developments. The motion would give staff time to review the city’s planning policies, zoning regulations and approval process.
The proposal appears in the city’s official council agenda. It has not passed, and describing it as an enacted moratorium would be premature.
A 220,000-square-foot proposal changed the conversation
The debate follows a Prologis application for a two-storey data centre near Tenth Line West and Argentia Road. The proposed facility covers approximately 220,015 square feet, according to planning documents examined by The Pointer.
Mississauga staff said the city may already have five to seven data centres, but the Prologis project is the only hyperscale application currently under review. A city planner also explained that the Official Plan presently treats the proposed facility as a warehousing use.
That classification is precisely the problem. A hyperscale data centre may resemble a warehouse from the road, but its electricity, cooling, backup-power and noise requirements are very different from pallets sitting quietly in a building.
The evidence is more complicated than the slogans
Residents have raised concerns about noise, electricity capacity, water demand and the project’s proximity to neighbourhoods.
Prologis says its proposed cooling design would use a mostly closed-loop system with an estimated daily water demand of roughly 2,000 litres. Region of Peel staff told residents that modelling based on the developer’s figures did not identify concerns with existing water-service levels.
Those findings deserve consideration. They do not eliminate the need for rules covering electricity upgrades, emergency generators, noise, environmental effects and the limited number of permanent jobs many automated facilities create.
A pause is not a permanent ban
The proposed motion would ask staff to create a dedicated framework for AI, hyperscale, enterprise and cloud-computing facilities. It would also examine whether developers could provide voluntary community benefits such as parks, recreation facilities or public art.
That is a reasonable response to a type of development the current planning system was not written to handle.
Canada needs computing infrastructure. It does not need municipalities approving enormous power users through rules designed for ordinary warehouses.
The important fact is that no moratorium exists yet. Council will decide on July 29 whether Mississauga should pause and build a proper framework—or continue evaluating projects with the rules it already has.
Tags: Mississauga, AI infrastructure, data centres, Ontario technology