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“A transparent conversation about the actual positive local externalities needs to take place, as well as what guardrails the province and county are willing to put up to prevent the local costs from outweighing the benefits.”
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On Meta’s project specifically, 44 per cent of those polled said they support it; 36 per cent said they oppose it, and 20 per cent had no view.
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Respondents were then told what the project involves. It is expected to bring more than $13 billion in investment, over 3,000 construction workers at a peak and more than 300 permanent jobs once running. It would be a one-gigawatt facility powered by a new natural-gas plant, and Meta says it will pay for the energy and grid infrastructure it needs.
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On those terms, 57 per cent called it a good deal for Alberta, against 27 per cent who called it a bad one.
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Ask what worries them and the answer is the power bill. Electricity demand and power prices led the concern list, ahead of water use.
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“There’s been a few data centres in the United States where, once they were up and running, suddenly there was a bit of an implication for local ratepayers in terms of their rates going up,” Enns said.
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Investment in Alberta topped the benefits list at 19 per cent. The next most common answer, at 17 per cent, was that the projects deliver no real benefit at all. Long-term jobs finished at 10 per cent.
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“These data centres aren’t big, heavy employee-driven operations,” Enns said. “That long-term employment, that’s not a really big selling feature.”
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Divide Meta’s $13 billion by the 300 permanent jobs, and each one costs about $43 million.
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Men and women split further apart. Among men polled, 59 per cent backed the Sturgeon County project. Among women, 30 per cent did.
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Enns attributed the gap to two things. Women track environmental impacts more closely, he said, and they tend to run the household ledger.
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“In a lot of households, women are responsible for the micro budget choices,” he said. “Squaring the utility bills at the end of the month, the cash flow in versus the cash flow out. We see it on the affordability side, that women are much more attuned to anything that might make things for the household more expensive.”
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Rocky View County has already had this argument. Council rejected Kineticor Asset Management’s 1,100-acre campus near Balzac in a vote of six to one last September, citing the location and the impact on neighbouring farmers.
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Asked about a comparable facility within 25 kilometres of their own home, respondents flipped to 41 per cent support and 44 per cent opposition.
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The explanation falls to the government.
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“The big numbers that get thrown around, $13 billion, or millions of dollars in tax revenues, they don’t stand on their own as being just a good thing,” Enns said. “Governments and local municipalities shouldn’t take for granted that the public is aware. I would argue they’re not.”
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Leger surveyed 1,000 Alberta adults online between July 17 and 19, 2026. Online panels cannot be assigned a margin of error, but a probability sample of this size would carry one of 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Results were weighted by age, gender and region.
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English (US)