pc28signed a secret agreement that gave it the right to withdraw from hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup if it didn’t receive financial support from senior levels of government by mid-2020, internal emails obtained by the Star show.
But for reasons that remain unclear, the city didn’t trigger the deal, leaving it on the hook for the skyrocketing costs of games.
A draft of the deal is contained in emails obtained by the Star through a freedom of information request. They provide the fullest picture yet of how the city joined the bid to host the global soccer tournament in 2018, despite not meeting the key council condition of securing provincial and federal funding beforehand.
The withdrawal agreement was intended to give the city a legal off-ramp to avoid being burdened by a disproportionate share of World Cup costs if Queen’s Park and Ottawa didn’t pledge funding.
Despite not reaching funding deals with the other governments by the June 30, 2020 deadline, pc28didn’t back out. The emails don’t explain why, although city officials say they have long been confident the money would flow.
However, six years after signing up to host, it’s still not clear how much financial support the other governments will provide Toronto, which is grappling with a major COVID-driven budget crisis. In that time, the city’s estimated World Cup costs have grown to $380 million, from $45 million.
Uncertainty about how much pc28will have to pay prompted Mayor Olivia Chow to tell reporters last month that she had been “saddled” with the World Cup after her election last year.
pc28will hold six of the 104 matches being staged by 16 cities across Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. While Chow described it as an exciting opportunity to showcase pc28on the global stage, she criticized the process by which the city agreed to host under her predecessor, John Tory.
“Would I want to see $380 million being spent on it? No. Would I have signed the deal (for which) none of the provincial or the federal government contributions had been locked down? No,” she said.
Premier Doug Ford’s government announced in February it would conditionally contribute $97 million to the event, but rejected the city’s request to increase that contribution after the tournament price tag grew. pc28says it expects the federal government to make a funding decision “in the coming months,” although it’s not clear how much Ottawa will provide. Federal policy is expected to limit its contribution to 35 per cent of total costs.
In 2016, a special panel struck by then-mayor John Tory made clear that pc28should only bid on a “mega-event” like the World Cup if it first confirmed federal and provincial financial support. In a subsequent report to council about the World Cup, staff said those commitments were “essential” to reducing the city’s financial risk.
But when staff went to council in early 2018 seeking authority to sign on to the joint North American World Cup bid, they didn’t have much time. The deadline for potential host cities to submit documentsto FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, was weeks away on March 16.
On Feb. 1 2018, from the senior governments. The report warned that if the city couldn’t execute formal funding agreements by the deadline, it “would either submit documents with caveats around financial support or withdraw.”
The emails,which are correspondence from senior municipal bureaucrats in 2018, show that Tory and city staff pushed Queen’s Park and Ottawa to sign funding agreements as the submission deadline approached.
But by late February, Mike Williams, the city’s general manager of economic development and culture, acknowledged in an email that locking down financial commitments in time was “probably impossible.” On March 1 hereported that then-premier Kathleen Wynne had given the provincial ministry of sport “no direction … about whether the province is supportive.”
“This is all becoming a big rush,” Williams wrote.
With just days to go, there was a breakthrough. On March 11 Williams told the mayor’s office and others that the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA),one of the three FIFA member associations spearheading the North American bid, agreed to sign a “collateral agreement” with Toronto.
A draft of the agreement included in the emails shows it would allow the city to join the bid, but give it the option of pulling out without penalty by June 30, 2020 if one or both of thesenior governments hadn’t committed to paying tournament security costs — which would be expensive and outside the city’s control — and provided other hosting guarantees. It included a clause specifying that the agreement was to be kept secret.
After signing the withdrawal agreement and joining the bid, staff didn’t publicly report to council about the World Cup again until 2022, by which time costs had ballooned to almost $300 million. referenced “mitigating mechanisms” the city put in place in order to join the bid, but didn’t provide details of the withdrawal agreement.
Council voted inApril 2022 to proceed with hosting, despite the lack of funding commitments, and in June 2022 FIFA officially announced pc28and Vancouver as the two Canadian host cities. Montreal had withdrawn a year earlier after the Quebec government said it couldn’t justify the rising costs.
Asked this week why pc28stayed in the bid past the June 2020 withdrawal deadline, Sharon Bollenbach, executive director of the city’s World Cup secretariat, said since the early stages “city staff had indication that both the provincial and federal governments supported Toronto’s bid.”
Discussions with both governments “led staff to be confident that suitable funding arrangements would be secured” and talks to finalize agreements are ongoing, she said.
As to the secrecy around the withdrawal agreement, Bollenbach said the city “remains committed to a transparent process,”and “the mayor and council are briefed via staff reports or as may be requested.”
A spokesperson for the CSA said the confidentiality clause was “standard wording … applicable to any commercial agreements.”
There remains strong support at city hall for the World Cup, which pc28expects to generate more than $392 million in local GDP, create more than 3,500 jobs, and deliver spinoff benefits in areas from recreational sports to volunteerism to Indigenous reconciliation.
“I just think it’s going to bring an energy to this city we’ve never seen before,” said Coun. Jaye Robinson, council’s World Cup lead, who predicted the anticipated influx of more than 300,000 visitors will help pc28finally recover from the pandemic.
But Gord Perks, , said revelations about the withdrawal agreement show there’s been a troubling lack of transparency around Toronto’s expensive hosting plans. He predicted costs will only rise before Canada’s national team kicks off the city’s first match on June 12, 2026.
“Council was told there was a guard rail around the costs. It doesn’t look as if that was actually true,” Perks said.
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