Toronto mayor lays out FIFA oversight and advisory groups amid cost-overrun concerns

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Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow on Wednesday appointed a team of current and former city councillors to steer the city’s World Cup involvement, as concerns loom about cost, overreach by soccer’s governing body and how the event will be policed.

The city was awarded the right in 2022 to play host to five games in the 2026 World Cup tournament, which is being held in Canada, the United States and Mexico. That was later increased to six games, along with a rising bill that now stands at $380-million.

As such details emerge, Chow has tried to walk a tightrope. She talks up the opportunities and excitement of the World Cup while criticizing her predecessor, John Tory, for a deal that gives Toronto few ways to push back against FIFA, the world governing body of soccer.

“I hear the excitement in your voice, but I also hear the caution,” Chow told Toronto councillors at their monthly meeting.

Earlier in the day she said David Soknacki, a former city councillor, budget chief and one-time mayoral candidate, would be her special envoy to FIFA. And she appointed a number of councillors to a steering committee, which she will chair, that will seek to control costs, find corporate revenue and build a lasting local soccer legacy.

However, none of that changes the fundamental shape of the deal Toronto made with FIFA.

Among the concessions, the city agreed to grant FIFA tax exemptions, protect its brand, allow it to sell advertising space in fan areas and co-ordinate with it any World Cup-related news briefings or information. Toronto also promised host-city “beautification” such as “covering and decorating” construction sites likely to be seen by fans and soccer officials and to cover the transit cost for ticket holders and accredited media.

More than 200 pages of detailed promises are laid out in a redacted version of the city’s agreement, first reported on by the Toronto Star.

Chow had designated the World Cup to be debated first at Wednesday’s council meeting. Council eventually voted to approve a variety of motions, including seeking to expand the fan experience across the city; using the games to advance climate resilience and speed up transit; and asking staff to draft principles to underpin future city bids to hold major events.

During the debate, City Manager Paul Johnson spent a good part of the morning on the hot seat, answering questions from councillors. He revealed that parts of the agreement have since been amended.

For example, the city is no longer on the hook for huge numbers of transit fares as fans move around Toronto. The city is also no longer required to prevent other large events from happening around the time of the World Cup games. And Johnson suggested that city bylaw-enforcement officers would not be actively looking for people infringing on FIFA’s brand.

Other aspects of the tournament remain murky, though.

“Have we guaranteed that the chief of police will have operational command during the event?” asked Councillor Gord Perks, prefacing his question by alluding to the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto, when it was unclear which level of police was in charge and there were more than 1,000 arrests amid what then Ontario ombudsman Andre Marin called “massive violations of civil rights.”

The city manager said it was too early to answer such a question. And he said there was no plan to remove people who are unhoused. “The position of the City of Toronto is not to have any untoward activity happen to unhoused persons,” he said.

Other lines of inquiry – about how transportation or garbage might be handled – elicited responses that boiled down to, we don’t yet know. Johnson also had no answer to who made the decision in 2020 not to opt out of hosting, an escape clause that became possible because federal funding contribution had not been secured.

“It is very difficult to accept that no one knows the answers to that,” Councillor Josh Matlow, who probed the city manager on this point, said in a later interview.

“These are not complicated questions. These are very direct and frankly intuitive and reasonable questions that the public has a right to know the answers to.”