As demand for digital infrastructure continues to grow, Canadian companies are increasingly looking south of the border to invest in data centres, drawn by the United States' ability to deliver projects at scale and with greater speed. The trend raises important questions about what Canada can do to remain competitive and attract investment in this rapidly evolving sector.

Speaking recently with IT Brief Canada, Jason Kroft, Head of Gowling WLG's Structured Finance and Securitization Group, discussed the regulatory, financing and policy considerations that will be critical to encouraging greater investment in Canadian data centre development. Jason emphasized that creating the right conditions for investment will require a coordinated approach across government, industry and capital providers.

"Sophisticated, seasoned data centre developers have to increasingly come to Canada and find this to be a good place to do business. That means the regulatory and legal environment has to anticipate everything from, how do you procure land in order to access the space you need for a data centre? What are the regulatory, municipal, and other land use planning that might be constraints? What are the tax incentives to cause somebody to want to deploy this kind of capital? So, when all of the regulatory, tax and the municipal planning come together, and the financing solutions are diversified, then you have the building blocks to do this successfully and at scale."

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