FEATURED HEADLINE
The situation surrounding the Rural Municipality of Sherwood and the Bell Canada artificial intelligence data centre project reeks of backroom maneuvering, rushed approvals, and a complete lack of transparency that screams potential corruption to anyone paying attention. In this tiny rural government body known as the Rural Municipality of Sherwood number 159, which surrounds the city of Regina and controls zoning and development on prime farmland, a massive 300 megawatt artificial intelligence facility is being forced through with shocking speed. Premier Scott Moe and Bell Canada chief executive officer Mirko Bibic jointly announced the project on March 16, 2026, as a supposed economic boon involving 1.7 billion dollars in capital expenditures by Bell with approximately 1.3 billion dollars expected in 2026 alone, yet the process that followed exposed deep flaws in accountability and public input.
Scott Moe bears heavy responsibility as the premier who publicly championed the deal and whose government stepped in to appoint a majority of the council just when it suited the timeline. Eric Schmalz, as minister of government relations, directly issued the minister's order on April 10, 2026, installing four non resident interim councillors under section 97 of the Saskatchewan Municipalities Act after a suspicious wave of resignations left the council without quorum. Those appointees, Ray Orb as interim reeve along with Mitch Huber, Donna Strudwick, and Judy Harwood, all carried deep ties to the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, and they wasted no time delivering a unanimous approval of the development agreement with Bell Canada on April 20, 2026, at a meeting deliberately held in Regina rather than locally.
The resignations in March 2026 that conveniently created the quorum crisis involved former reeve Susan Oakley Paul, who cited medical issues, along with councillors Grant Paul who refused to have his name affiliated with the direction the council was heading, John Wilke who complained about email problems preventing review of materials for a closed special meeting on code of ethics and ombudsman complaints, and Trent Reiger who provided no reason at all. These exits followed internal closed door discussions, and their full letters were only released later in the April 20 agenda package, leaving residents with lingering questions about whether discomfort with the data centre project or other undisclosed pressures played a role. The timing allowed the province to hand pick experienced but non local figures who could fast track the approval without the scrutiny of a full elected body.
At the April 20 meeting itself, the council under Ray Orb's leadership locked out roughly 70 to 100 protesters and concerned citizens from the small chambers, citing capacity limits while the livestream suffered audio failures until moments before the vote. Security escorted at least one delegate out after she shouted that the meeting was corrupt. Registered delegates, mostly adjacent landowners, raised serious alarms about noise, water usage, stormwater runoff, aquifer risks, traffic, and farmland loss, yet many of their questions went unaddressed in a fully satisfactory way. Bell representative Dan Rink, president of Bell Fabric AI, appeared to offer some commitments on extra well testing, but the overall atmosphere felt engineered to minimize public interference.
Bell Canada, under Mirko Bibic and Dan Rink, orchestrated heavy lobbying in Saskatchewan, dramatically increasing its registered lobbyists specifically targeting discussions around artificial intelligence and technological innovations with government officials including the premier's office. The company filed initial rezoning documents through the opaque numbered company 102226744 Saskatchewan Limited, and the land transaction details for the 160 acre site remain undisclosed to the public, including the identity of the previous farmland seller and the exact price paid. Bell also secured long term non cancellable tenant agreements with United States based firms CoreWeave, represented in commentary by chief operating officer Sachin Jain, and Cerebras under chief executive officer Andrew Feldman, positioning itself as the landlord collecting revenue while shifting hardware risks to others.
The partnership with George Gordon First Nation adds another layer of opacity, with chief Shawn Longman and chief executive officer Don Ross of George Gordon Developments Limited signing a memorandum of understanding focused on indigenous procurement, workforce development, and potential waste heat reuse on adjacent land owned by the nation. Some community members publicly complained about inadequate consultation, raising doubts about whether the partnership truly represented broad member input or served more as a convenient shield for the project.
Construction has already begun with pre testing and heavy equipment on site, even as residents explore injunctions and ombudsman complaints to challenge the legitimacy of the appointed council's actions. Regina city councillor Shanon Zachidniak publicly called for slowing the process and highlighted the lack of transparency, while protesters and landowners like Koby Schwab, Doug McKell, Carla Shirley, Janna Pratt, and others described the entire sequence as a miscarriage of democracy and nakedly anti democratic. The rushed timeline, from rezoning in February through appointments in April to approval in under an hour amid chaos, combined with closed door elements and limited access, points to a coordinated effort to push the project through before local elections or fuller scrutiny could intervene.
No smoking gun documents have yet proven illegal bribes or direct personal kickbacks to Scott Moe, Eric Schmalz, Ray Orb, or the other appointed councillors, but the pattern of convenient resignations, provincial intervention at the perfect moment, heavy lobbying by Bell Canada, undisclosed land sale details, and the physical shutting out of the public at the decisive meeting all create an overwhelming stench of backroom deals designed to bypass accountability. Adjacent landowners have faced deferred or ignored concerns for months, with answers hard to come by even in supposed closed door sessions. This setup prioritizes corporate and provincial economic ambitions over the voices of the roughly 1,000 residents in the Rural Municipality of Sherwood and the long term impacts on prime agricultural land, water resources, and quality of life. The names that matter most, Scott Moe for setting the political tone, Eric Schmalz for executing the appointments, Ray Orb for chairing the locked down meeting and defending the rushed vote, Mirko Bibic and Dan Rink for driving the corporate side with aggressive lobbying, and the appointed councillors Mitch Huber, Donna Strudwick, and Judy Harwood who delivered the unanimous green light, all sit at the center of this troubling sequence that demands far greater independent investigation before the project becomes irreversible.
Bell Media, which owns CTV, is hemorrhaging money with the news division alone losing 40 million dollars a year and the broader television operations bleeding an additional 185 million dollars annually. In recent parliamentary testimony before MPs, Richard Gray, vice president at Bell Media, openly complained about these massive losses and pleaded for the same government subsidies and journalism tax credits given to other news outlets, essentially begging Canadian taxpayers to step in and cover the red ink created by CTV's shitty work and declining audience.
Instead of using profits from its strong telecom business to bail out its own failing media division or invest in fixing the biased content and poor journalism that has driven viewers away, Bell is doing the opposite. The parent company BCE under chief executive officer Mirko Bibic is happily pouring 1.7 billion dollars into a massive 300 megawatt artificial intelligence data centre project in Saskatchewan, with approximately 1.3 billion dollars of that capital expenditure scheduled for 2026 alone. This money is coming from debt and internal cash flow generated by the profitable parts of the business, while the unprofitable CTV side gets nothing but cost cutting and subsidy pleas.
Bell Media has already gone through repeated rounds of layoffs, including hundreds of positions slashed across CTV and Bell Media in late 2025 and early 2026, the cancellation of local newscasts, and the sale of radio stations in a desperate attempt to stem the bleeding. Yet executives like Richard Gray still show up in Ottawa demanding more regulatory relief and taxpayer support, claiming fear inside the network over the ongoing losses. At the same time Mirko Bibic and Dan Rink, president of Bell Fabric AI, are aggressively advancing the 1.7 billion dollar AI investment with long term tenant deals secured from United States firms CoreWeave and Cerebras, treating the data centre as a high return growth play that will deliver recurring revenue while the legacy television division is left to rot or be propped up by public money.
This is a clear and disgusting case of misplaced priorities. Bell has the cash and the borrowing power to fund a 1.7 billion dollar artificial intelligence megaproject because it views that as a smart bet for future profits. But when it comes to its own shitty CTV operations that produce content many Canadians no longer trust or watch, the company refuses to spend its own money to fix the problems and instead expects Canadian taxpayers to subsidize the failures. The names that matter most here are Mirko Bibic as chief executive officer of BCE who sets this twisted capital allocation strategy, Richard Gray as the Bell Media vice president who directly testified about the 40 million dollar news losses and pushed for government handouts, and Dan Rink who is busy executing the lucrative AI data centre while the media side begs for bailouts.
Bell wants it both ways. It charges customers high fees through its telecom services, generates billions in free cash flow, invests heavily in futuristic artificial intelligence infrastructure, and then turns around to demand that ordinary Canadians help cover the losses from its failing CTV division. This approach reveals a company more interested in chasing profitable tech bets than in taking responsibility for the poor performance and untrustworthy journalism coming out of CTV. The entire pattern stinks of corporate welfare seeking, where Bell protects its growth areas and socializes the costs of its legacy media mistakes onto the public. This demands real scrutiny before any additional taxpayer support flows to a division that Bell itself clearly does not consider worth saving with its own money.
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