It seems the CFC system of private bidding for national championships ( Canadian Closed/Zonal every second year; Canadian Women's Closed/Zonal every second year ) is in bad shape. The system seems very fragile.
Let's look at recent history:
1. The practice is that the CFC likes to approve bids one year in advance, and so generally tries to encourage bids by the prior year's AGM. At the 2008 Montreal AGM, there was no bid for the 2009 Canadian Closed/Zonal, nor the Women's Zonal.
2. President David Lavin was unable to generate any bid for the 2009 Canadian Closed between the July 2008 Montreal AGM and the summer of 2009. So Hal Bond, on the principle that some tournament was better than no tournament, put in a last minute, barebones bid in mid-2009, that the CFC accepted.
3. At the Edmonton 2009 AGM, there was no bid for either 2010 national closed.
4. Standards hoped for for a national championship were not met in part in 2009, and there was some vocal criticism, especially from the new Canadian Champion, IM Jean Hebert. Hal advised that the budget was limited, and that some volunteers withdrew at the last minute, and so some features of a national championship that might have been expected fell by the wayside. Hebert opined that no tournament was better than an inferior Canadian Championship. The 2009 Women's Zonal was also held - there seemed to be no public criticism of it. Jean Hebert in 2009 attended the FIDE World Cup ( first stage of the World Championship ) as the Canadian representative. Dina Kagramanov will be attending the 2010 FIDE Women's Knockout Championship for Canada.
5. The CFC felt there was some merit to Hebert's position that the bar should be set at a reasonable height for the Canadian Championship, and so GM Mark Bluvshtein filed a motion in mid-year 2009-10 to strengthen a bit the terms and conditions for holding a national championship ( eg. free accomodation for Canadian GM's ).
6. Between July 2009 and June 2010, President Eric Van Dusen was unable to foster any bids for the 2010 national championships.
7. At the 2010 Toronto July AGM, the governors did pass the Bluvshtein motion raising the standards somewhat for the Canadian Closed. There were no bids for the 2011 national closeds/zonals.
8. From the time Mark filed his motion, and even after it was passed by the governors, some organizers complained that it was a further disincentive to an organizer being willing to bid on the Closed ( note though that bids weren't coming in well before this motion was filed and passed ). Further, some organizers have said that obtaining sponsorship for the Closed is well-neigh impossible, because of its limited nature in terms of participants, and lack of public profile.
9. In July 2010, new CFC President Bob Gillanders advised that CFC was not going any longer to actively pursue bids for the 2010 Canadian Closed, nor the 2010 Canadian Women's Closed, and that it appeared these tournaments would not be held in 2010.
10. At the 2010 Toronto AGM, the governors passed a motion ( brought by me, based on an earlier motion filed a year before by then President David Lavin ) to create the non-executive officer position of Tournament Coordinator - one of his/her duties was to help foster bids for major Canadian Tournaments.
11. The position of Tournament Coordinator saw no volunteer come forward to take on the position, and it remains vacant still.
12. Some governors proposed that a committee be struck to look into the CFC Bidding Process ( it had been hoped that it would have been chaired by the Tournament Coordinator, had there been one ), and to make recommendations how the system could be strengthened, so that national championships would be held annually. To date no such committee has been struck.
It seems the CFC has a big problem here. One of our core objectives is the holding of national championships, and we are failing at it.
Any thoughts on any of the above for the new Executive?
Bob