Canadian masters poobahs thinking merger with Athletics Canada
Among Americans, the simmering issue is whether USATF Masters should seek a divorce from USATF. But in Canada, the masters are mulling marriage. Paul Osland, president of CMAA, recently wrote: “The CMAA/AC membership discussions have been moving forward at what seems like a very slow pace to someone who is used to timing things down to the hundredths of a second. At any rate, I am happy to be able to inform the membership that the discussion document that we created back in February of this year has received extremely positive responses from the Provincial Branches of (Athletics Canada), who have responded to date. We are just waiting on a couple of additional provinces to respond and then we will be able to move to the next steps of drafting a formal proposal for agreement.” What’s going on?
According to a masters mole up north:
The CMAA (the WMA affiliate body) is totally separate from Athletics Canada. The problem lies in the fact that masters athletes, like those in Ontario, join the provincial athletics association (and are members of AC), but then have to send a separate membership to the CMAA if they want to participate in WMA events (or support the national masters program for that matter).
We (especially Ontario) have been working for years to have one membership cover all – both the CMAA and AC, with the CMAA becoming the masters branch of AC. Then everyone would have access to the masters programs at both the national and international levels. We would all benefit from the access to government sponsorship as well.
I was still confused by this, so I asked my source if Canadian masters could avoid becoming the ignored stepchild of the Mother Ship, Athletics Canada.
My mole replied: “Yes, the CMAA would retain financial and administrative independence.”
My response: “Best of both worlds! Go for it!”
In any case, CMAA Prez Paul added in his report to Canadians:
The last update is around the work that a committee comprised of Vern Christensen, Donna Dixon, Brian Keaveney and George Reilly is working on to revise the CMAA organization documents and to have the CMAA incorporated. Vern reports that progress has been slow here as well, but the outlines of a new, incorporated CMAA has been provided to our outside legal advisors, and the committee expects to have draft incorporation documents for review shortly, after which progress will hopefully be more pronounced.
2 Responses
Makes sense. And similarly the British Masters Athletics Federation (BMAF)should be dismantled and re-emerge incorporated into UK Athletics as an independent British Masters Committee. Long, long overdue.
Ken, first you called me the Masters ‘Czar’, and now I’m the ‘Mole’….why the demotion? 🙂
Leave a Reply