It turns out the province hasn’t confirmed $97 million in FIFA funding
We may need to Klarna this
Have you ever booked a vacation you can’t really afford and justified it by thinking, Life is short, the money will come, this is what credit cards are for?
Well, it seems this approach is not dissimilar to how we wound up with plans to host the FIFA World Cup this summer. According to the CBC, the city is still waiting on $97 million from the provincial government, which it needs in order to pay for the major sporting event set to begin in June.
Related: Toronto hotel prices will jump by 78 per cent during the World Cup
In a World Cup subcommittee meeting, Toronto’s FIFA secretariat presented a report that said the province’s funding agreement is still being negotiated.
The entire budget for six World Cup matches is $380 million. The city has agreed to pay $180 million of that, and the federal government will pay $104 million. The rest was expected to be paid by the province. Mayor Olivia Chow has said the city cannot afford to contribute further and that the province needs to pay its share. (Premier Doug Ford‘s office had not responded to the CBC’s request for comment at the time of publication.)
“We’d really like you to sign your cheques,” Councillor Paul Ainslie told reporters in reference to the province. “Whoever is listening from the provincial government, this is not just for the City of Toronto. The provincial and federal government are going to see a lot of tax dollars.”
It’s been reported that Toronto will see a positive economic output of $1.3 billion thanks to the World Cup. We just need that casual $97 million first.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
