Squash Canada review process leads to big changes in governance
By Squash Mad Reporter
Squash Canada made history this weekend with the unanimous approval of changes to its governance structure.
Squash Canada concluded a highly successful season by hosting the Annual General Meeting June 5 – 7th, 2014 in Ottawa. The AGM weekend featured presentations for membership and athlete representatives by Rachel Corbett of Sport Law & Strategy Group, Andre Lachance of Baseball Canada and Tom Megginson & Shawna O’brien of ACART Communications.
The new structure voted in includes a new membership class (National Team Athletes), the creation of a new Board of Director position the Athlete Director, to be elected solely by its new membership class together with the changes required to comply with the new Not-for-Profit Act (NFP).
Under the new governance, the athlete class will join Provincial/Territorial Squash Associations as the voting members of the organization.
Other major changes included a transition process for the Squash Canada Board of Directors to move away from an operation board to a competency-based policy governance board by 2017.
Squash Canada had spearheaded a very comprehensive review process over the past two years through a Governance Review Task Force (GRTF) which analyzed various governance models and membership structures worldwide together with professional opinions and governmental recommendations.
The GRTF was comprised of representatives from a large P/T (Anne Smith), small P/T (Scott Mundle), two athlete representatives (Robin Clarke and Stephanie Edmison) together with board liaison John Roche under the expert guidance of Rachel Corbett of Sport Law & Strategy Group.
This result speaks volumes on Squash Canada’s ability to listen to our stakeholders while still using sound judgement, exercising professional advice and applying prudent vision to crystalize the final GRTF proposal.
This is a landmark opportunity for Squash Canada as our high performance athletes can now collaborate directly with the board and staff on our goals to constantly improve our organization, our performance results and in becoming a leading squash nation”. said Squash Canada’s President Lolly Gillen.
Squash Canada Executive Director, Danny Da Costa also said, “we value the importance of our athletes in our organization’s success and the new Athlete Class and Athlete Director on the Board will be a very positive step to ensure that the athletes voice is at the forefront of all Squash Canada decisions on and off the court”.
The AGM concluded with the election of the new Board of Directors; Scott Mundle of Winnipeg in the role of VP Finance, Steven Wren of Gatineau, Quebec in the role of VP Player Development and Patrick Ryding of Toronto, ON in the role of VP Technical.
They will join, Lolly Gillen (President) of Toronto, ON, Gene Turk (VP High Performance) of Winnipeg, MB and John Roche (VP Operations) of Victoria, BC.