967. Township of Armour Mayor Rod Ward

Mayor, in your opinion, as of recording this in September of 2026, what's the biggest challenge facing the township today?

Ooh, [sighs] that's a tough one.

I, I think, um, some of the concerns that I have are around what I call outside influences and outside political influences.

Uh, and I'll give you a, a concrete example.

We had, uh, a, a party who was interested in putting an AI data center in our-

Oh

...

in our area, and yeah, yeah, there's the reaction, everybody.

But the, the feedback...

And this was even before he put an application in.

This was absolutely just at the discussion phase.

He was kicking the tires.

There was so much backlash on Facebook that ca- we know it came from outside of our area.

Uh, so this is, in my view, it's ideological.

It's somebody doesn't like AI, or they don't like data center, whatever the reason is, and they've latched onto this.

So they're, they're searching, I'm sure, using AI, if, ironically, uh, and finding out where small municipal councils are talking about this stuff, and they're jumping all over it.

Yeah.

The problem for that is it doesn't even give us a chance to respond or have the discussion with the proponent.

And the other thing it does, in this case, the person, they backed off.

They saw the backlash.

They weren't interested in getting involved.

But what happens then is everyone looks at your township and says, "Are you guys always gonna say no? Like, are you, are, you're not, are you not pro-development?" So it just, it's a can of worms that we would prefer not to deal with.

We'll come to the right conclusion ourselves.

We don't need outside influencers to, to direct where we're going.

Is it hard to do that? Because the outside forces are always gonna be there on any issue.

Mayor, in your opinion, as of recording this in September of 2026, what's the biggest challenge facing the township today?

Ooh, [sighs] that's a tough one.

I, I think, um, some of the concerns that I have are around what I call outside influences and outside political influences.

Uh, and I'll give you a, a concrete example.

We had, uh, a, a party who was interested in putting an AI data center in our-

Oh

...

in our area, and yeah, yeah, there's the reaction, everybody.

But the, the feedback...

And this was even before he put an application in.

This was absolutely just at the discussion phase.

He was kicking the tires.

There was so much backlash on Facebook that ca- we know it came from outside of our area.

Uh, so this is, in my view, it's ideological.

It's somebody doesn't like AI, or they don't like data center, whatever the reason is, and they've latched onto this.

So they're, they're searching, I'm sure, using AI, if, ironically, uh, and finding out where small municipal councils are talking about this stuff, and they're jumping all over it.

Yeah.

The problem for that is it doesn't even give us a chance to respond or have the discussion with the proponent.

And the other thing it does, in this case, the person, they backed off.

They saw the backlash.

They weren't interested in getting involved.

But what happens then is everyone looks at your township and says, "Are you guys always gonna say no? Like, are you, are, you're not, are you not pro-development?" So it just, it's a can of worms that we would prefer not to deal with.

We'll come to the right conclusion ourselves.

We don't need outside influencers to, to direct where we're going.

Is it hard to do that? Because the outside forces are always gonna be there on any issue.