TORONTO — The upcoming Pan Am Games in Toronto are still proving to be a windfall for some of the executives involved in planning the event.
While the bonus pool for executives on the Games' organizing committee has been reduced from $7 million to $5.7 million, it's being split among fewer executives -- 53 instead of 64.
Pan Am Games CEP Saad Rafi says he made some organizational changes that reduced the number of executives eligible for bonuses.
He adds that 40 per cent of the officials with the Pan Am games travel from one major sporting event to another, and "completion incentives" are offered by most organizers of major events.
Pan Am executives paid as much as $250,000 are eligible for bonuses of up to 100 per cent of their annual pay when the Games are over — half for staying on the job and half conditional upon performance.
Progressive Conservative Pam Am critic Todd Smith says the payments seem overly generous, adding some shouldn't qualify for a bonus at all because some venues weren't completed on schedule.
Rafi, who is on secondment from his job as a deputy minister with the Ontario government, will be eligible for a bonus equal to his annual salary of $428,000 if the Games come in on schedule and on budget.
The province ordered TO2015 to tighten its expense rules in 2013 after some of its well-paid executives, including former CEO Ian Troop, billed taxpayers for things like a 91-cent parking fee and $1.89 cup of tea. Troop received a severance package worth more than $500,000 when he was let go.
The original $1.44 billion budget for Toronto's Pan Am Games doesn't include the $700 million cost of building the athletes' village or $10 million for the provincial Pan Am secretariat.
