There are many cities that offer this to their citizens and it is particularly important in Canada, where the oligopolistic market has produced the most expensive service in the OECD. John Tory's former roles as Rogers CEO and his ongoing entanglement with that corporation has made accomplishing this difficult in the past.

There have been numerous attempts to provide this service downtown but reality has yet to catch up to the hype. One reason is that John Tory, our current Mayor, is also on the payroll of Rogers and is in a "conflict of interest" whenever this issue comes up, failing to provide the necessary leadership for this to become reality, as I wrote in 2018 (as well as more recently).

Going even further back, Toronto Hydro announced free Wi-Fi downtown in the spring of 2006 (cbc, iwc) and there was even a non-profit dedicated to this dream, but results have been lacklustre.

I am not against Mayor Tory as a person and I do respect his accomplishments but I find that his entanglements with an oligopoly that, despite the regulatory failures at federal level, continues to provide a service that is both too expensive and remarkably unreliable, is distasteful and unbecoming of his office.