New Brunswick Firm Proposes 375MW Data Centre Campus in Miramichi

Three months after Miramichi city council paused zoning changes that would have permitted data centres and battery energy storage facilities in heavy-industrial zones, a New Brunswick-based company has come forward with plans to build a major data centre campus in the city, signaling renewed momentum for digital infrastructure development in the region.

At Tuesday's council-in-committee meeting, Josh Vautour, CEO of Fredericton-based Faster than Light (FTL), presented a phased proposal to develop a "data centre campus" in Miramichi. The plan calls for breaking ground next year with an initial 100-megawatt facility, eventually scaling up to a 375-megawatt operation by 2030. Vautour said he hopes to complete the first phase and hire initial staff by the end of 2027, though he did not disclose a specific location for the project, noting that a site announcement is expected in the coming weeks.

The presentation, delivered jointly by Vautour and Jim Ward, general manager of the North Shore Mi'kmaq Tribal Council, was limited to 10 minutes under the city's procedural bylaw, with no discussion held afterward. "After nearly two years of everything from analysis to feasibility reviews, stakeholder and government engagement at all levels, we have a formal presentation that we're sharing with the general public," Vautour said. "This is a first for us."

The proposal arrives at a critical juncture for Miramichi and the broader New Brunswick region, where demand for data centre capacity has been rising amid growing reliance on cloud computing, artificial intelligence workloads and digital services. The council's earlier decision to pause zoning amendments for heavy-industrial zones had cast uncertainty over such projects, but FTL's formal presentation could reignite discussions about how the city accommodates large-scale digital infrastructure while balancing energy and land-use considerations.

If realized, the 375-megawatt campus would represent a significant piece of digital infrastructure for Atlantic Canada, an region that has increasingly attracted interest from operators seeking renewable energy sources and cooler climates for efficient data centre operations. The involvement of the North Shore Mi'kmaq Tribal Council suggests the project may also carry economic partnership dimensions with Indigenous communities, a model that has gained traction in Canadian infrastructure development.