View Poll Results: New NFP act discipline of members bylaw would you prefer?

Voters
16. You may not vote on this poll
  • I prefer the default rule where the board decides with no appeal.

    2 12.50%
  • The board decision may be overturned by a simple majority of members.

    5 31.25%
  • The board decision may be overturned by a two thirds majority of the members.

    6 37.50%
  • The members shall have authority to suspend or expel any member with a three quarters majority vote.

    2 12.50%
  • There should be no mention of discipline contained in the new bylaws submitted to the government.

    1 6.25%
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Thread: Straw Poll on Discipline of members under the NFP Act

  1. #11
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    What about the executive simply recommending expulsion which is then sent to a vote by the voting members automatically? No decision to overturn, merely a recommendation and automatic vote.

    2/3, 3/4, I don't really care I was just curious where it came from. Shouldn't have been tied to the AGM.
    Christopher Mallon
    FIDE Arbiter

  2. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bob Armstrong View Post
    Hi Ken:

    Good tweaking - didn't occur to me. I entirely concur as an amendment to option 2. I hope the committee will in their report, highlight this minor option for the governors, if it is not the top vote-getter. It has an important legal foundation.

    I personally, however, voted for the most stringent option before eliminating someone - option 4. If the executive can't get a full 3/4 of the members on their side, the benefit should go to the offender - s/he has too much support, and any action should not take place. But option 2, with Ken's amendment, is second best in my mind, and I could also accept it.

    Bob A
    Rule number four is the current one with the removal of the limitation that the governors can only do this during an AGM. Currently any governor can initiate such an action.

    I don't see this option being exercised during my term as I would push for a very high threshold before this doomsday option could be exercised. If we had a serious cheating scandal of the kind that is alleged with Bulgaria's Boris Ivanov in our midst that would be one situation where I would seek to use this rule. The default rule is that the executive decides with no avenue of appeal. This is something which will very possibly cause legal repercussions under some circumstances and might open up the voting members to liability along with the board. A bad decision by the voting members might require the board to resign in the interest of self-preservation.

    I believe that even without any bylaw that if the directors make an unfair decision there would be nothing to stop the voting members from bringing forth a motion to reverse any decision of the directors. Whatever is decided it needs two thirds support to make it into our bylaws. If Pierre is correct (and it seems to me that he is) this is something that we can address later without negative consequences to our application.

    My hope with the straw poll is that we can figure out if this is a sticking point or not. If one of the options can't gain strong support of the governors then it will be left out of our submission.
    Last edited by Vladimir Drkulec; 01-08-2014 at 04:11 PM.

  3. #13
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    I can assure you Bob that while certain individuals can occasionally 'get under the skin' in my 10 years on the national executive I've never encountered a decision where I felt that played a factor in an Executive vote. I can remember a couple of times when I suspected a president was delaying a vote as passions were rather inflamed. But we don't do things on a personal basis and I hope never will.

    I remind Governors that this discussion is brought about by the NFP Transitioning Process rather than something any Executive member or the Executive collectively has felt an urgent need for. The NFP Transitioning Guide (which is a PDF one can read that is in the first link I quoted in the NFP discussion) which I hope you've all read says we're supposed to have such a clause but that different forms of it are acceptable to the federal government.

    I strongly disagree that a 25% vote of the Governors should ever be sufficient to overturn a Board decision.

    Further, I take strong personal exception to Bob's statement that "Thus, the governors (to be called the voting members), whose numbers are bigger, and who are more objective because they have not been in battle directly with the " offender" " as I do feel strongly that it impugns the integrity of current and past board members. I've seen plenty of cases where tempers have gotten heated at the provincial membership and Governors level and do feel the Executive is almost always fairly dispassionate - far more so than the Governors in fact.

    By the same logic the National Appeals Committee should be expanded to 30 members as "obviously" a larger jury is better.

    Again - this whole discussion is being driven by the NFP discussions and is absolutely not something anyone on the board is making a crusade of!

  4. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Garland Best View Post
    It would be nice to be able to choose more than one option as long as they did not conflict. I would have then selected both options 3 and 4. I think the board AND the voting members should have the ability to disipline, with voting members able to overrule the board by a 2/3 majority.
    Once this vote expires tonight I will start a new one with the most popular options and the ability to select more than one and the wording will be "I would ratify" one or more of the following options. Any option that gets two thirds support of the voters is a viable one. If there is no consensus then we can just skip discipline. This would not mean that we can't discipline, it would mean that discipline would be covered under the default provisions of the NFP act.

  5. #15
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    It appears that option 2 and option 3 were the most popular but not popular enough to get the votes required to be included in our bylaw. Though this may be because those that wanted this type of an override were forced to pick one or the other but could not pick both. A total of 11 out of fifteen voted for one of these two options.

  6. #16
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    My suggestion in this case would be to have a second straw vote polling ONLY those two options.

    It's a straw vote which by definition is a non-binding statement of opinion by the Governors. I would not be seriously bent with either option but Ottawa would be "bent" if we didn't include something along these lines so...

    Again - I'd be just as happy without such a bylaw but it seems this is one of the things Ottawa is demanding as part of the NFP transitioning so...

  7. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lyle Craver View Post
    My suggestion in this case would be to have a second straw vote polling ONLY those two options.

    It's a straw vote which by definition is a non-binding statement of opinion by the Governors. I would not be seriously bent with either option but Ottawa would be "bent" if we didn't include something along these lines so...

    Again - I'd be just as happy without such a bylaw but it seems this is one of the things Ottawa is demanding as part of the NFP transitioning so...
    I already started a straw poll with just the two options and where you can vote for both options if they are acceptable. So far it looks like those who replied like the 50% plus one option as an override to an executive decision.

    A bylaw is NOT required. The effect of no bylaw would be the default bylaw.

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