The Pan-Am games, to be held in the city of Toronto, Ontario in 2015 are still a long way off but already controversy has arisen over expenses passed off to taxpayers by the highly-paid executives
Documents obtained by the Toronto Sun newspaper showed the CEO, Ian Troop, who is paid $477,000 a year, stuck taxpayers with a parking ticket he received. Troop also expensed $8,561.19 for a Mexican hotel and cocktail party.
The games committee senior vice-president, Allen Vansen, billed taxpayers $27-thousand to cover his move from Vancouver to Toronto, including a charge of $110.00 to transfer a pet.
The Pan Am executives also billed taxpayers for expensive hotel rooms and dinners as they travelled to Guadalajara, London, Glasgow, Miami, Jamaica and St. Kitts.
The committee’s senior vice-president Louise Lutgens rented a car in Guadalajara for $1,830 and also billed $9.92 for laundry and another $45 for a cover for her BlackBerry, the Sun reported.
CFO Barb Anderson, who is paid $307,000 a year, twice billed taxpayers $1.89 for coffee.
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, of the governing provincial Liberal party under attack by opposition parties over the expenses told reporters. “The rules that were put in place allowed this kind of entitlement. It’s unacceptable and those are the wrong rules, they shouldn’t be there, Should people be expensing tea and coffee? No, they should not, and the rules will change”.
The provincial Progressive Conservatives are demanding an auditor-general’s investigation into spending, while Ontario’s New Democrats said they worry the Liberals never learned anything from past expense abuses like the $1-billion eHealth scandal in 2009 that saw well-paid health care consultants nickel-and-diming taxpayers for muffins and coffee.
“We’ve seen the same kind of scandals with eHealth, the exact same kind of scandal with the Ornge air ambulance, where these folks at the very top are expensing not only things like coffee and tea and muffins, but trips all over the world,” said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.
Pan Am 2015 chairman David Peterson said in a release Monday night that Troop and his team are reviewing the policy on expenses.
“TO-2015 followed all the approved policies around expenses and travel,” Peterson said, adding “I do understand people can interpret these expenses in different ways.”
“We remain committed to transparency and openness,” he said.
(with files from CBC)
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