Pan Am Games execs to split $5.7M in bonuses

A man walks past the official Toronto 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games retain store in Toronto on Friday, April 10, 2015. (Nathan Denette / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

The bonus pool for executives with the Toronto 2015 Pan American Games organizing committee has been reduced from $7 million to $5.7 million, which will be split among 53 executives instead of 64.

Pan Am Games CEO Saad Rafi says he made some organizational changes that reduced the number of executives eligible for bonuses and also cut the total amount they will split to $5.7 million.

Rafi says 40 per cent of the officials with Toronto's Pan Am games travel from one major sporting event to another, and "completion incentives" are offered by most event organizers.

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 on performance.

Progressive Conservative Pam Am critic Todd Smith says the payments seem overly generous, and he doesn't think some should qualify for a bonus because some venues were not 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 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.