Pan Am Games travel expenses on the radar
Score of Pan Am Games officials here and abroad are seeing the world on the taxpayers’ dime. TO2015 estimates that airfare alone cost some $500,000 for the past four years.
Thestar.com
Dec. 15, 2014
By Richard J. Brennan
Scores of Pan Am Games officials here and abroad are seeing the world on the Ontario taxpayer’s dime.
TO2015 estimates that airfare alone cost some $500,000 for the past four years. But critics say closer to $800,000 was spent on flying TO2015 and Pan American Sports Organization (PASO) officials to far-flung destinations where they were wined and dined.
“These guys haven’t found anywhere that they weren’t willing to fly to,” said Tory MPP Todd Smith, the Games critic for the Progressive Conservatives, whose staff Monday was still poring over the expenses.
“They have been to London. Glasgow, Geneva, Rio, New Delhi, Italy, Barbados, Cayman Islands - they’ve been everywhere,” Smith told the Star.
Other destinations include: St. Petersburg, Russia; Mexico City, Athens, Atlanta, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Montevideo, and Guadalajara.
Under the Agreement of Responsibilities and Obligations for the Organization of the XVII American Games in 2015, the host jurisdiction is required to pick up the tab for visiting dignitaries - including airfare and a room with double beds. And TO2015 also paid for sport event experts to be flown into Toronto to advise officials here.
“When you’re charged with delivering an international event, some international travel comes with the territory.” TO2015 spokeswoman Neala Barton said in an email statement.
Smith said that may be the case, but asked why someone from TO2015 would have to go to judo competitions in both Colorado Springs and Whitehorse. “You know you can watch these things on a computer and there is such a thing as a teleconference these days,” he said.
It is costing at least $2.5 billion to host the Games, which will host 7,666 athletes competing in 51 sports at venues in 16 municipalities, including Toronto, Hamilton, Milton, Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa, Caledon, St. Catharines, and Welland.
Taxpayers got a glimpse of some of the questionable spending by TO2015 when the agency dumped 5,000 sheets of expenses covering four years on reporters at Queen’s Park on Friday - a day after the legislature rose for the Christmas break.
There were claims for pricey dress shirts, South American wine, Smarties, $8,220 in Toronto Argonauts tickets, $9,820 in Tim Hortons gift cards, yoga pants and jackets, hundreds of international flights - including $3,800 for two adults and a child to jet from Turin, Italy, site of the 2006 Winter Olympics - a wine tour, flowers, parking tickets, dozens of catered meals and snacks, educational courses and professional dues for staff, among other expenses.
As for the trip from Turin, Barton stated: “Both individuals were hired by TO2015 and were relocated to Toronto in 2013, along with their young child. They both worked in Sochi and other Games in similar roles.”
Barton noted much of the travel is required in order that the Games are the best they can be. But even so, she said since Saad Rafi took over as TO2105 CEO in January he has demanded to approve all international travel personally.
She said steps are being taken to cut down on travel. “As we move from planning the Games to executing them, many of the non-mandated travel and relocation costs are now behind us. Aside from the travel required under the host city agreement, TO2015 staff will largely be working from the Games footprint”
TO2015 chair David Peterson said once reporters get past the stories of orange juice and flowers, “the real story is (these Games) are run enormously efficiently and totally transparently. And the mistakes are...peanuts.”
