By Armaan Khanna, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Lakeside Leader
November 12, 2026
Bigstone Cree Nation is fighting plans for an artificial intelligence data centre power plant near Wabasca and a permit renewal for a major oilfield waste dump north of town.
Chief Margo Auger laid out the First Nation’s concerns in two Oct. 19 letters. The Municipal District of Opportunity council reviewed the letters at its Oct. 26 meeting in Wabasca and accepted them as information on a motion by Councillor Darlene Jackson.
The first letter targets the Hoole Power Generation Facility, a 19.8-megawatt natural gas power plant proposed by Armada Nowlit Energy Ltd. The company has applied to put nine natural gas generators on an existing Crown well site about two kilometres northeast of Wabasca-Desmarais. All of the electricity would run an on-site AI data centre rather than the provincial power grid. Affected residents had until Nov. 5 to file concerns with the Alberta Utilities Commission.
In her letter to Reeve Marshall D. Auger and council—which was also sent to Premier Danielle Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney—Chief Auger made it clear that Bigstone does not back the project. While Bigstone officials toured the data centre and company facilities, she said a tour is not a green light.
“We want to make our position absolutely clear and unequivocal: There was no Free, Prior and Informed Consent of the proposed application for the Wabasca Data Center – Armada-Nowlit Hoole Natural Gas Power Generation Facility,” Chief Auger wrote.
She said the company never shared its plans ahead of time, adding that putting a notice in the local paper does not count as real consultation.
“As a self-determining Peoples, we are not ‘Stakeholders,’” she wrote.
Because the site sits on Treaty 8 land near reserve boundaries and Wabasca homes, Chief Auger warned the plant could hurt local air, water, wildlife, and traditional medicines. She also faulted the company for relying on office-based environmental studies that leave out Bigstone’s traditional land knowledge, and said the Nation is asking Ottawa to step in with a federal impact review.
Local community advocate Travis Gladue-Beauregard, a Bigstone member in the M.D. of Opportunity, said the data centre looks good for the economy on paper, but environmental safety and proper consultation have to come first.
He agreed with M.D. council’s choice to wait until after Bigstone’s recent election before talking more about the project, pointing out how closely linked the two communities are.
“You’ve got to remember, the M.D. of Opportunity is a recognized Indigenous municipality of Alberta,” Gladue-Beauregard said. “There’s a great number of Bigstone members that live on the M.D. side as well that pays taxes.”
Gladue-Beauregard said he is a proud supporter of Alberta’s oil and gas sector, but northern families are already dealing with abandoned oil wells and bad summer wildfires.
“The community has been evacuated four or five times in the past nine years,” he said. “Just the smoke out there is bad enough. So we have to look at a lot of things here and take all that into the equation too with these data centres.”
“I’m for industry, but you’ve got to be environmentally responsible first,” he added.
Those same worries about the land are behind Chief Auger’s second letter, sent to Alberta Environment Minister Grant Hunter and Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL).
Bigstone is trying to stop CNRL from renewing its provincial permit for the Woodenhouse Class II Industrial Landfill, located 43 kilometres north of Wabasca-Desmarais. Chief Auger said the Nation found out through a public notice that CNRL applied to dump 3.5 million tonnes of oilfield waste, including oil-soaked soil, at the site.
More than 10,000 Bigstone members count on the Crown land around the dump to hunt, fish, trap, and pick food and medicine. Chief Auger warned that leaking chemicals could poison the water and wild food that families eat.
“The landfill is a direct threat to the integrity of the ecosystem, to human health and to the well-being of society,” she wrote, asking the province to turn down the permit until a full impact study is done with Bigstone.
Subscribe to our newsletter.
During the Oct. 26 meeting, Reeve Auger said the M.D. plans to reach out to Bigstone’s newly elected chief and council to work together on upcoming community plans, noting the two governments can get much more done together than apart.
