AUGUST 2014
H
business elite canada
11
cerned with building tangible infrastructure
and job creation to attract long-term talent and
capital, but also intangible infrastructure such
as wide-range, no caps, high-speed broadband
Internet access networks in the city. It is proud-
ly responsible for implementing Canada’s first
open-access broadband network, and the sec-
ond in North America.
“We’re re-promoting this as a new city, and
so we recognize it’s really about that infrastruc-
ture that you don’t see. That infrastructure is
a key element in attracting talent, in attracting
jobs, and building quality of life down here,”
said Campbell. “Certainly broadband is one
example, and that’s something nobody really
contemplated when we started. It’s not seen
as the normal infrastructure, but we realized
early on the potential to attract jobs downtown
to the waterfront, and this is where the talent
is so it’s a critical innovative aspect.”
Over the past decade, Toronto has taken
some heat from critics who will note that devel-
opment is moving at a slower-than-preferred
rate, but smart, sustainable development and
revitalization, some of which is of the unseen
nature in previously unchartered territory,
takes time. A different, more traditional chal-
lenge for Toronto is to accommodate Mother
Nature by the massive Flood Protection Land-
form under Waterfront Toronto, with the help
of Infrastructure Ontario, constructed with
clean soil taken from construction sites within
Sherbourne Common
