Squash Canada Announces New Structure by Danny Da Costa June 9, 2014 -OTTAWA (ON)
– Squash Canada concluded a highly successful Canadian squash season by
hosting the Annual General Meeting (AGM) 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.
Squash Canada made
history this weekend with the unanimous approval of changes to its
governance structure, which included 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.
