Features

Demand for data centres has sky rocketed, and this writer means that in the literal sense of the word. In March of 2025, the first data centre to be placed on the moon. blasted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket housed inside Intuitive Machines LLC’s Athena lunar lander.

The Calgary Global Energy Show (formerly the Calgary Global Petroleum Show) is a staple event for the energy industry in Western Canada with its 56th edition having taken place in June 2025. It attracts more than 30,000 attendees each year from around the world. It’s just one of numerous global conferences and events produced by dmg events, headquartered in London.

In a recent media interview, Kevin O’Leary, chairman of O’Leary Ventures, the Miami-based company which is in the midst of planning a major data centre in the Municipal District of Greenview near the Northern Alberta city of Grande Prairie, related his experience in proposing this project to European sovereign wealth funds. O’Leary described being initially shot down by those potential investors because of what he said is the Canadian federal government’s poor reputation for approving large infrastructure projects.

The news that O’Leary Ventures has made bold plans to build a massive data centre in Alberta’s Municipal District of Greenview has focused attention on the factors required for regions to attract global scale projects. In the context of these huge facilities centres obtaining energy supplies, there could be considerable complexity because most of the existing and proposed projects would use multiple primary and backup electricity sources. This kind of situation could also result in unfamiliar legal circumstances as Brady Chapman, a corporate and commercial attorney with MLT Aikins LLP in Calgary, explains.

The Curling Group (TCG) is banking that curling can generate NFL football level of excitement along with an accompanying financial windfall.

One of the most critical global issues, felt intensely in Canada, is the housing shortage. In 2022, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) projected that 3.5 million additional housing units must be built this decade, over and above what is normally built, to bring house prices to an affordable level (Estimating how much housing we’ll need by 2030). It’s a complex, polarizing and, above all, urgent problem. Is there any chance there might a solution somewhere out there? In a Globe & Mail editorial from December of 2023 (There are no solutions to Canada’s housing crisis—only trade-offs), Josef Filipowicz, Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute, suggested there are no real solutions as he quoted American economist Thomas Sowell who said, “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.”

In the action drama that is our modern life, far too many people have been consuming a steady diet of blue pills. And I am not talking about the blue pills that inspire aging leading men to reach the climax before their character is removed from the script. Rather, I am referring to the blue pills that allow people to continue living in (sometimes) blissful ignorance under the illusion of the Matrix.

I have studied, written, and talked a lot about energy over the past few years – articles in BIG Media and elsewhere, countless presentations in classrooms, on webinars, to conference delegates, plus podcasts and radio interviews. Together with a great expert team and support from the University of Alberta and Canadian Society for Evolving Energy, I have created

Today I am joined by Gerald Panneton, a long-time mineral and resources executive. I saw you were listed as retired CEO, but that’s obviously changed. What brought you back into the corner office? GP: Well, it’s not the first time I’ve retired and come back. I guess it must be the love of the business itself, being in the resource sector, creating value with the drill bit. Being able to pick up undervalued properties.