Toronto delegates were charmed by the small, southern Italian city of Matera where, in search of business opportunities, they hiked steep roads to tour famous caves and visited restaurants to dine on local cuisine. The weeklong overseas trip in June, 2017 cost more than $8,000 of Toronto taxpayer money for Councillor Vincent Crisanti and economic development director George Spezza. MP Judy Sgro said her expenses were covered by a group of constituents. MP Francesco Sorbara said he paid for the trip himself. Since Mayor John Tory was elected in 2014, the City of Toronto has signed a flurry of non-binding agreements with other cities, often involving expensive taxpayer-funded travel, that have arguably yielded limited benefits for Toronto.Read more: Toronto councillor says it was money well spent at $900-a-night hotelOne night on the Matera trip, the taxpayer-funded delegation listened to musicians play in an old quarry cave. The next day they watched a boy’s basketball tournament in Matera’s piazza where a team from Toronto placed second. Surrounding them was the same craggy skyline that set the scene for Hollywood blockbusters.Other days they toured beyond the hillside city, discovering the lush Basilicata region with vineyards and vegetables, and to factories where machines spun out pasta.In between the tours and dinners, they signed a four-page, non-binding “memorandum of understanding” with Matera, a landlocked outpost with a population 46 times smaller than Canada’s largest city. Under the terms of the five-year agreement, the cities will help identify companies that are interested in doing business in either Toronto or Matera by sharing information about culture, film, education, tourism and sporting events.More than a year later, economic development general manager Mike Williams, one of the approvers of the trip, could not name any benefits that have resulted from the Matera memorandum of understanding. “I can’t p ...
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