Canadian Lacrosse Association executive dysfunctional
BARRIE’S BEAT
Examiner sports director Mike Davies’ articles in Monday’s and Tuesday’s Examiner brings to light the dysfunction in the upper levels of the Canadian Lacrosse Association.
When 19 members of the current men’s national team along with the management team publicly demanded resignations of CLA executive, it revealed a growing disconnect between lacrosse’s governing body and many of the major players in the game.
Those who have been around the game for years have long been troubled with the national body when it came to the adult levels of the sport. Now with the revelations in the Examiner articles and the reaction of the players and coaches, this rift has widened.
The CLA’s continued inept handling of rules, equipment matters and championship series (who can forget the fiasco they caused with the drug testing at the 2012 Mann Cup series in Peterborough) have forced senior/major teams and junior A teams to question their ability to be involved in the elite divisions of the game.
With the revelations of the CLA agreeing to a scheme that brought major sanctions from the Canada Revenue Agency, this divide between those who play the game at the elite level and the CLA has never been greater.
Even though membership on the CLA executive changes regularly, there seems to be a deeply seeded degree of incompetence that is ongoing.
This current situation shows the executives involved at its inception were completely out-of-touch with reality. They blundered into a gifting program that would never pass the smell test of the most gullible of individuals or organizations. The result was in 2010 the CRA revoked the CLA’s Registered Canadian Amateur Athletic Association status and their ability to offer tax receipts for donations.
It is mind boggling the entire executive, except for one who abstained, could vote for this program that required them to send incoming donations to an off-shore account in Bermuda, and not raise some questions of its legality. As police say about financial schemes, “If they sound too good to be true, they likely are!”
Lacrosse players of the five national teams have been paying to compete for their country for a number of years. It makes one wonder how many of our elite players have just passed off the opportunity because they could not afford the costs of representing their country? Much of that cost could have been negated if the CLA had their status to offer tax receipts. By being under sanction by an agency of the federal government, it makes requests for donations nearly impossible.
Ironically, while the players are paying up to $10,000 to play for Canada at world championships, the CLA executive members are attending those international events on the CLA expense account.
As for the players and teams at the major/senior and junior level, this is just another example of the incompetence of the CLA. It just adds to a growing movement to completely pull these leagues away from their national governing body like the top levels of hockey did years ago.
The annual CLA meetings are in mid-November. With this festering impasse between the national teams and the CLA executive, a compromise seems distant. The futures of the national teams are certainly in question. If the current management team resigns as threatened, the men’s team, based on their letter to the CLA, will likely join them.
The CLA executive as now constituted has lost the confidence of most lacrosse people. Anything less that a complete overhaul of the CLA executive from the president on down at the annual meeting could well mean the end of both the international teams as well as major/senior and junior leagues as we know them.