Morning. In focus today, we look at how the global fight over artificial intelligence is hitting closer to home.

Energy: Alberta, Ottawa and top oil producers agree to advance the Pathways carbon capture project.

Mideast: The U.S. launched strikes on Iran hours after President Donald Trump vowed to reinstat e an American blockade of Iranian ports. Iran responded with attacks on Middle East allies of the U.S.

Quebec: First Nation votes to reject a landmark hydro deal.

Economy: Higher rates possibly needed in “near term,” U.S. Fed’s Waller says.

The commencement address didn’t start off with booing. At first, the crowd of about 10,000 students were calm and attentive as Eric Schmidt reflected on his career and time as chief executive of Google.

Forty years in the business had given him plenty of perspective on the technological leaps that had reshaped the world either before these graduates were born or shortly thereafter: the arrival of the laptop, the internet, the smartphone.

What he hadn’t observed was a shift of energy in the crowd when he spoke about the role of social media in degrading the “public square.” This was a cohort that also spent their high-school years trapped inside by pandemic restrictions – keeping in touch on TikTok, Twitch, Instagram – but missing out on school sports, proms, parties.

To a crowd of people who had grown tired of living online – and which was now coming to terms with a labour market already killing entry-level labour – what Schmidt said next landed more like a threat than a reason to be optimistic.

“So today we stand on this edge of another technological transformation,” he said. “One that will be larger, faster, and more consequential than what came before. It will touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person and every relationship you have.”

A smattering of boos grew loud enough to drown him out, and the incident became the highest-profile anti-AI backlash to hit institutions of higher learning across North America. University and college campuses, a crucible of humanity’s largest debates, became a measure of broader AI anxiety.

Data divide

To national reporter Joe Friesen, who spent years covering postsecondary education, this “clear, thumbs-down reaction” became even more striking when he dove into the generational differences in attitudes toward AI. Of all the demographics surveyed by Pew Research Center, people under 30 were both most likely to use AI chatbots and the most skeptical of them.

In the U.S., about 50 per cent of adults reported using a chatbot like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot in 2025 – up from 33 per cent the year before. There’s little reason to doubt these numbers are much different in Canada. “My text messages are now being summarized by AI before I even read them. I’m hearing from friends under pressure as AI transforms their work.”

As AI becomes more ubiquitous, it’s also becoming more polarizing. “It’s happening quickly, but not everyone is on board. I wanted to learn more about who they are and how they think.”

From the campus to the Vatican, Friesen reports, warning signs are flashing about a broader societal pushback against AI. In Canada, battles over data centres might be the most visible manifestations.

The work they do – provide the physical infrastructure to host, train and run generative AI, which learns patterns from massive amounts of existing data – requires enormous amounts of power to keep servers from melting down.

Local backlash has been growing against plans to build these facilities in Saskatchewan and Alberta, where the vast majority of new data centres are being planned.

The benefits of hosting data centres, such as the Meta’s recently announced $13-billion data centre in Sturgeon County, Alta., include new jobs and higher utility revenues. But a data centre of such enormity would require nearly three-quarters the amount of energy required for the entire city of Edmonton – a spike that could drive up costs for consumers and harm the environment, critics say.

Big war, bigger battles

Yesterday, more than 200 leading researchers and economists issued a joint statement warning that AI could drive a larger economic transformation than the Industrial Revolution in a “vastly shorter” period.

The signatories included 15 Nobel laureates and researchers at OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, calling for deeper research on AI’s economic impacts. The letter urged building policies and institutions to ensure the technology benefits society and to navigate risks such as large-scale job displacement.

Their letter was aimed at governments and technology leaders – respectively, neither the most agile institutions nor the most objective – but decisions have to be made somewhere. The war over who holds that power has largely being fought on a global stage.

Across North America, a third way is emerging: In the U.S., more than US$60-billion in data centre projects have been blocked or delayed by local campaigns, according to Data Center Watch. As Friesen reports, plans to build in Canada are being met with an increasing vocal opposition.

“It’s still very early in this phase of technological change so it’s not all clear how it will shake out,” Friesen said. “But it’s interesting to see the