In Canada and other countries, governments are trying to build or develop more housing, transmission lines, mines, energy projects and data centres while simultaneously expanding public participation in the decisions that shape them.

Artificial intelligence may be about to make that combination much harder to manage.

Toronto, Mississauga and Hamilton, as well as other municipalities across Canada, have recently wrestled with data centre development.

Somewhere in one of those debates, a resident has almost certainly uploaded a planning report into ChatGPT or a similar AI tool and typed a simple prompt:

“Help me write a five-minute presentation opposing this project.”

Seconds later, they had a polished argument, technical questions and a set of objections tailored to the data centre proposal.

The irony of using AI to oppose the infrastructure that powers AI is obvious. But the more important story is what this technology may do to the approval process itself.

Governments have spent years trying to make public consultation more accessible. AI may become one of the most powerful tools ever created for doing exactly that.

But it creates an asymmetry that policymakers have barely begun to consider.

AI lowers the cost of participation

The time and cost of creating sophisticated public submissions are collapsing. The time and cost of evaluating them by municipalities and their staff are not.

Governments should therefore modernize the other side of the equation, creating greater balance, by developing AI tools that help approval authorities sort and assess this growing AI-generated input.

Canada is trying to build more major infrastructure projects at precisely the moment AI is making it dramatically easier for citizens to participate in, and oppose, the approval of those projects.

For decades, public consultation contained a natural constraint. Preparing a serious intervention took time. Residents had to read hundreds of pages of technical material, understand planning rules, assemble evidence and organize their arguments. Some hired lawyers, planners or environmental consultants.

Those barriers were hardly democratic virtues.........

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