Mark Carney is fumbling on 'job-killing technologies,' Avi Lewis charges

Carney has pitched AI as an engine for Canada’s economic future. For his part, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has stayed largely quiet on the rapidly advancing technology, even as the issue publicly exposed a fissure in his caucus this week.

But for Lewis and the rebuilding NDP, those local battles are the front lines in a bigger political movement fighting the impact AI will have on jobs, privacy, affordability and the environment.

“We shouldn’t be rushing in the AI arms race. We should be rushing to put real guardrails on the technology,” Lewis told the Star in an interview this week.

“I feel like I share the fear of the vast majority of Canadians that we are rushing into an unregulated experiment that is being run for the benefit, profit and power of some of the just plain weirdest people that have ever been masters of the universe on planet Earth.”

Three months into his leadership, Lewis has emerged as one of Canada’s most prominent critics of what he describes as the Carney government’s “all on board” approach to AI.

He entered the national stage with a call to ban what he called the “creepy” practice of surveillance pricing, through which retailers can deploy AI-powered algorithms that use personal data to set higher prices for individual consumers.

Since then, New Democrats have thrown their support behind local campaigns against proposed AI data centres across the country. 

Lewis wants a national pause on building AI data centres until there are national standards in place governing water and energy use, as well as ownership and data sovereignty.

“There’s no voice for those concerns in our political conversation, so it is an area where I think we have an opportunity and an obligation to lead,” he said, arguing Poilievre’s “silence” on AI “belies” his talk about protecting Canadian workers.

“This is a job-killer technology to end all job-killing technologies.”

Abacus Data CEO David Coletto said the political bet could pay off for Lewis and the New Democrats, who are trying to rebuild from the party’s electoral devastation last year.

“Right now, AI and data centres are not, I would say, top of mind for most people,” Coletto told the Star, pointing to recent polling from his firm that showed just eight per cent of Canadians put AI as a top three issue facing Canada.

“But it doesn’t mean it won’t be in the future,” he said. “I think that’s politically the bet that Lewis and the NDP are making, and they should make, because I do think it’s going to rise as it impacts unemployment, on privacy, on a handful of companies extracting a lot of wealth out of people, and as the data centre debate ramps up.”

Public opinion polls suggest Canadians are so far split over AI data centres (although opposition is strongest in the communities where they’re being proposed) while Canadians broadly support government regulations on AI.

While emphasizing the need for trust in AI, the Carney government recently launched an AI strategy promising to spend billions of dollars positioning Canada as a sovereign AI leader, with funding for boosting adoption across the country and building large-scale data centres that promise thousands of jobs.

The strategy also pledged a crackdown on surveillance pricing, although it leaves that and other protections to a yet-to-be-created regulator and does not include any projection of job losses due to the technology.

Standing in the way of data centres and the rush to adopt AI technology without guardrails is a “huge organizing opportunity,” Lewis told a community event in Regina on his first tour as NDP leader in May.

“It goes way beyond the partisan divide, it goes way beyond these bulls — t wedge issues that they’ve been dividing us with.”

He told the Star he believes AI is a “world-changing, revolutionary technology” with potential benefits, but that its rollout needs to slow down because “it is already moving faster and going way deeper than anyone can control.”

At least one Liberal MP has faced pressure to respond to growing local concerns.

Aslam Rana, who won the previous NDP stronghold of Hamilton Centre in the 2025 federal election, acknowledged the tension in a statement last week addressing a proposal to build an AI data centre by the city’s harbour that Hamilton city council opposes.

While Rana said questions about environmental impacts, noise, electricity costs and property values “need to be addressed” before the project is green-lit, he also argued there is an “undeniable need” for “sovereign AI infrastructure to protect the data of Canadians currently being stored in other jurisdictions,” while touting potential benefits to health care and other sectors.

A divide in the Conservative caucus also emerged on Thursday when the party’s recently appointed AI critic, Leslyn Lewis, questioned in a social media post whether Canada has enough “energy infrastructure, grid capacity, engineering capacity and skilled labour” for a newly announced $13-billion Meta AI data centre in Alberta.

After Calgary MP Michelle Remper Garner replied calling it a “great investment in Alberta” that is “squarely” in the province’s jurisdiction, Lewis clarified her criticism of the project, saying it was directed at federal policies and not Alberta’s plan.

In the U.S., opposition to data centres has emerged as a popular stance among both Democrat and Republican candidates, Coletto said, but Canada’s Conservatives face competing pressures that might get in the way of louder opposition.

Poilievre has said he believes AI should be adopted in a way that “empowers people” and does not “replace” them, but his Conservative party have yet to detail a clear plan.

“They’ve got provincial allies, like Danielle Smith and Doug Ford, who want these facilities built in their communities,” said Coletto, “and there’s lots of investment dollars tied to them.”

Former NDP strategist Jordan Leichnitz said Lewis’s stance on AI could be a “cornerstone issue for his leadership” that fits within the party’s tradition.

“When there are major changes in technology and work, the NDP has often positioned itself to ask the question of who’s going to benefit from this, and are there adequate protections for working people,” Leichnitz said.

But fierce opposition to the adoption of new technology can also create new challenges, Coletto believes.

“The risk is the upside that people see in AI, or the reason they think we need to do something about it … is that if we don’t, Canada will be left behind, that if we become the place where technology can’t be implemented,” he said.

”(If) it’s harder for people to adopt, does that put us at a disadvantage?”