At long last, we have answers.
For several months, Ontario curlers have been left in the
dark about the reasons the Canadian Curling Association has made the Ontario
Curling Association a member not in good standing, causing the provinces
curlers and curling clubs to be cut off from resources from the national body.
The situation has escalated to the point that the OCA has
been given a deadline of Monday to offer an apology or face further sanctions
in the form of a full suspension. That would mean, as I understand it, no
curler representing Ontario would go on to a national championship.
However despite both these bodies being representatives of
the curlers who pay the dues and support the game, neither side was ready to
give a reason as to the problem.
But now we know.
And it is both simple and straightforward while at the same
time complex. In some ways it’s shocking while in other ways, it’s really hard
to believe that the situation has escalated to where it is over these issues.
At the heart of the matter is a large group of people who
believe the OCA is dysfunctional and being improperly run. Documents obtained
by your humble scribe include charges of poor administration, boorish behaviour
by OCA directors and staff, improper treatment of sponsors, failure to react to
issues on a timely basis, low public perception and possibly libelous statements being made by the OCA president.
The group includes members of other provincial and
territorial associations as well as stakeholders and sponsors within Ontario
who tried unsuccessfully to have the OCA’s executive director, Doug Bakes,
removed at a meeting this summer. (He has since announced his retirement
effective this June.)
The OCA executives, including president Ian McGillis and
Bakes, have fired back claiming to be in control and so far refusing to
apologize, a move that would start the process to Ontario being back in the
good books.
It should be pointed out that I reached out to Bakes,
McGillis and CCA CEO Greg Stremlaw prior to writing this blog. Bakes referred
me to McGillis who declined to answer any questions. I got no response from
Stremlaw, who I believe may be in Sochi. [UPDATE: Stremlaw contacted me from Sochi and declined to comment on the issue]
So the actual reason for the move to put the OCA as “member
not in good standing” stems from a letter McGillis sent to the OCA board and
voting members. In that correspondence, there were statements made against the
CCA Board, member association presidents and external auditors, which the CCA
says are inaccurate and defamatory.
What were the statements? I quote from one of the CCA documents
provided which lists them as follows:
"Accounting principles were being compromised.”
“Only a questionable allocation of 2007 Edmonton
Trial rights fees kept the bank from proceeding with bankruptcy and insolvency
actions.”
“The ACF was coerced into signing an accord at
the 2011 Edmonton Brier.”
“The CCA is able to exert a considerable amount
of control and leverage at the NCC.”
“Not really sure if Resby who’s perceived by
many at the NCC table as a CCA plant, knows what reality is so how can his
perception be taken seriously.”
“I’d suggest that many of the recent actions
with the OCA and our ED including Code of Conduct charges, Mrs. Todd’s group
appearing in front of the OCA Board, Curl Manitoba’s brief to the OCA Executive
are all CCA driven events.”
The CCA launched an investigation and could find no one who
had any evidence that there was any truth to any of the above statements.
That’s when it decided to move on to the next step. On Tuesday it gave the OCA
a week to issue an apology or it would hold a special meeting of all member
associations on March 11 at which there would be a vote to suspend the OCA.
The OCA says that it is awaiting information from its legal counsel before responding and it took an action of its own. Instead of forwarding the 2014 Affiliation fees of roughly $40,000 to the national body, it forwarded them to the Northern Ontario Curling Association to hold in trust until this issue is resolved.
But the issue appears wider than this one situation. There are allegations
that the overall operation of the OCA is in a shambles, that sponsorships have
been lost, that the chance to get government money has been mishandled, that
championships have been hobbled due to a lack of communication, that it’s not
listened to the pulse of the province of curlers it’s said to represent, and
that the OCA has not acted in a professional manner with other member
associations.
That last allegation was brought out in a letter sent by a former Curl Manitoba president who described an acrimonious
relationship between the OCA and the CCA evident at a recent National Curling
Congress (the annual gathering of all the member associations). The charges
include that one member of the OCA delegation was reading the paper during the
CCA annual meeting; that one was not properly dressed for an evening function;
that the Ontario delegation left the room during a CCA-led session that focused
on four new Ontario curlers and a program that is a model for the rest of
Canada.
What is clear is that there has been tension between the OCA
and the CCA for some time. In some cases, the OCA and the Alberta Curling
Federation (ACF) have been harsh critics of the CCA and some of that is clearly
warranted.
As well, there appears to be a growing dissatisfaction with
the overall operation of the OCA from within the province.
This past September a group of stakeholders that included
former OCA presidents Fran Todd, Michele Gower and Kathy Ryan, the retired CEO
of The Dominion (Ontario curling’s most important sponsor) George Cooke,
another past sponsor, Brian Cowan of Teranet, Roy Weigand, the curling manager
of the Scarboro G&CC and Gregg Truscott, who chaired the 2009 Ontario
Seniors met with the OCA board of directors in a confidential meeting to
address a long list of concerns.
Some of the most notable came from the sponsors. For example
Cooke wrote that a few years ago, he expressed to the OCA board a desire to
sponsor the Tankard (men’s provincial championship). No one followed up with
him and only when he pushed the OCA did Dominion end up with the sponsorship.
As well, prior to Cooke’s retirement this year, he was able
to extend all his curling sponsorships with every association in Canada except
one – Ontario.
It was the same from Cowan, whose company sponsored a number
of youth championships from 1996 – 2004. In 2005, he asked to extend the
sponsorship for one year for $10,000 but was told by Bakes that a minimum of
three years was required and that another sponsor was waiting in the wings,
which Cowan says he learned later wasn’t true. Cowan described Bakes as being
arrogant, disinterested in any extension and unwilling to discuss or negotiate.
Following the lengthy presentation, the OCA agreed it would
respond within a month. When it failed to do so, Todd requested a Special
General Meeting, a request that McGillis turned down.
Now it’s hard to let the CCA off with a free pass in all of
this. It clearly has an agenda and is out to change the OCA or at least ask it
to clean up its act. In one case it launched a code of conduct charge against Bakes by using his controversial answers on a survey that was clearly labeled confidential. However it seems to want to put an end to matters. Cutting off the curlers of Ontario may be the only way to
get its message across but to do so while keeping them in the dark is wrong.
At present, it
seems hard to get any responses out of the OCA's directors. Messages go unanswered
and time and again, a response from McGillis seems to be late, past a deadline
or awaiting a response from legal counsel or with an apology for tardiness (in
fairness, it should be pointed out that all of the directors are volunteers
with jobs and families).
And so now the OCA sits at a crossroads. It must respond by Monday or set in motion an action by the
CCA that could devastate Ontario curlers. Imagine winning the Ontario Senior or
Wheelchair championship and then be told you won’t be allowed to go to the
national final. Or imagine you’re a club (such as mine) that is interested in
playing host to a national championship but you’re frozen out.
Ontario clearly needs change and it looks as if it’s going
to get it. The question is whether it will initiate it on its own, or have it
forced on it by an outside source.
