The Financial Post reports in its Thursday, April 16, edition that Microsoft is building a data centre in Vaughan, Ont., that will annually need just about half an Olympic swimming pool's worth of water to run. The Post's Naimul Karim writes that data centres are in high demand due to the rise of artificial intelligence. However, critics argue they strain electricity grids and consume significant water, prompting companies to defend their existence alongside promoting their capabilities. Microsoft has committed to investing $19-billion in Canada to expand its existing data centres in Ontario and Quebec, and the Vaughan data centre -- called YTO 11 -- is expected to be fully operational in the second half of this year. Microsoft says the data centres will not raise electricity prices for Canadians or adversely impact their water supplies. It said it would not build a data centre where the utility provider could not sustain. Microsoft Canada president Matt Milton says the company's data centres in Canada aren't the large gigawatt facilities often mentioned. The Vaughan facility will use "dramatically lower" energy as it will focus on running everyday AI services through already-trained systems, known as "inference."