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March 22 marks World Water Day—an annual reminder that access to safe, clean drinking water is a basic human right, not a privilege.
The meteoric rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years has presented new challenges for water resource management. The massive data centres that make AI possible require massive amounts of water to cool hardware. How are federal, provincial, and municipal governments determining access to clean water for some of the world's wealthiest tech corporations and how does that impact existing domestic water priorities?
The crisis at home
Right now, 39 long-term drinking water advisories remain in effect across 37 First Nations communities in Canada. Some of these communities have gone without safe tap water for more than 25 years. Entire generations have grown up unable to drink from their own faucets. In late 2025, Indigenous leaders called the situation a "national scandal" and pressed the federal government to fast-track clean water legislation — legislation that has been delayed repeatedly.
At the same time, a January 2026 report from the United Nations University declared the world has entered an era of "global water bankruptcy." The report warns that many water systems have been pushed past the point of recovery. In Canada, that warning should hit close to home.
Big Tech's thirst
As communities struggle for safe drinking water, some of the world's wealthiest corporations are locking in access to vast quantities of municipal water for AI data centres.
A CBC investigation last fall revealed that a single Microsoft data centre in Etobicoke was approved to use up to 1.2 billion litres of water per year—the equivalent of 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. A nearby facility in Vaughan is expected to consume 730 million litres annually. Globally, data centres consumed an estimated 140 billion litres of water for cooling in 2023 alone, according to the International Energy Agency, and those numbers will only increase as AI use accelerates.
The federal government has set aside $700 million to attract data centre investment with little consideration for freshwater usage. According to the CBC investigation, the Amazon data centre in Varennes, Que., has been operating since 2018 without a water meter. It also found that a Microsoft facility in the Netherlands was revealed to be consuming more than four times its promised water allocation—while local residents were being asked to cut back.
A shared resource, a shared responsibility
Canada is rolling out the welcome mat for data centres that consume staggering volumes of clean water, while 37 First Nations communities still cannot safely drink from their taps.
No matter where you live, water is foundational to your community and your livelihood.
Unifor believes governments at all levels must take immediate, concrete steps to address this imbalance:
- The federal government must make good on its promise to eliminate all long-term drinking water advisories in First Nations communities.
- Regulatory approvals for data centres must include binding, transparent requirements for water use, including public reporting, independent monitoring, and enforceable limits.
- Municipal governments must ensure that data centre approvals do not come at the expense of residential and community water needs, especially in drought-prone regions.
- Indigenous communities must provide their free, prior and informed consent before water allocations that affect their lands, territories, or resources.
Water belongs to all of us. It is not a commodity to be consumed in secret by the world's richest corporations while communities go without. The UN report on global water bankruptcy makes it clear that the era of treating water as an unlimited resource is over.
