10. Bids for 2023 and 2024 Events and beyond

[Fred McKim]

Is that the entire count? I can't imagine that a Calgary event couldn't draw anyone from SK or MB though no question those are our 3 largest affiliated federations.

I know there were players from NS there, so I presume the 3 highest province count.

[Mahmud Hassain]

Thank you CFC President Vlad Drkulec, CFC Executives, and CFC Voting Members!

It is gratifying to see so many of the CFC Voting Members representing the many different provinces across Canada having the confidence in our Organizing Team of Vancity Chess and Juniors to Masters Chess Academy (JtM) by awarding us the Canadian Open and CYCC to host in Surrey, BC in 2025.

Big thank yous to Vlad Rekhson, Vlad Drkulec, Fred McKim, and Ian Findlay for their public endorsements of our Surrey, BC bid. I have previously worked with and/or attended their events in the past, and their successful events will be good reference points for our team as we move forward to making the 2025 Canadian Open and CYCC memorable events.

I also want to thank the many other CFC Voting Members who reached out privately to root for us, letting us know that they are supporting our Surrey, BC bid. Thank you, your encouragement and support mean a great deal to us. Similarly, to the Canadian Chess Community at large who expressed their congratulations and support – thank you!

Also, sincere appreciation to Hal Bond who was so kind, and congratulated our Team today. You are a class act, Mr. Hal Bond!

And finally, I want to acknowledge our AMAZING Organizing Team of Tyler Sanderson, GM Gergely Szabo, Murray Chu, Mats Sanderson, and Paul Leblanc -- they are simply the BEST to work with! And, hey Team, guess what? The CFC Executives and CFC Voting Members just awarded us 100s upon 100s of additional hours of chess organization work! Looking forward to working more with this OUTSTANDING crew on the 2025 Canadian Open and CYCC in Surrey, BC.

Best Regards,

Victoria Doknjas
Co-Chair - Organizing Committee on behalf of:
Vancity Chess and Juniors to Masters Chess Academy, Hosts of the 2025 Canadian Open and Canadian Youth Chess Championship (CYCC) in Surrey, BC.

Victoria,
Thank you for this elegant and wonderful post.

In President Drkulec's defense, I have not seen on this forum a public endorsement from him. You will agree that the president's public endorsement would have made it not fair.
In this vote, it was very fair! Congratulations on a very well presented and well deserved bid.
We are very excited for the Vancouver 2025. I plan to play there.

Meanwhile, we kindly ask and welcome the voting members for any feedback you may have. For that, I am providing my email in confidence.
mahassain01 AT gmail DOT com

Thank you
Mahmud

[Mahmud Hassain]

I have high regards for the Guelph proposal organizers and totally trust their integrity. I just would like to point out that the current bidding procedure is faulty and should be fixed.

Michael

Michael,

Thank you for your trust in our integrity. We, too, trust the integrity and well-intentioned bids from BC.

On the procedures matter, you may have a point here (optics matter). I am all for fairness and transparency.
From my experience of over 35 years in various board governance, I would recommend that future bids be summitted, in confidence, to the secretary by a preapproved deadline. The secretary must keep in secret till the deadline and posting and the bids may not be amended after posting.

I am a fiercely Canadian and I am of the view that all parts of Canada are collectively ours. We are all winners!

Sincerely,
Mahmud

[Aris Marghetis]

Michael,

Thank you for your trust in our integrity. We, too, trust the integrity and well-intentioned bids from BC.

On the procedures matter, you may have a point here (optics matter). I am all for fairness and transparency.
From my experience of over 35 years in various board governance, I would recommend that future bids be summitted, in confidence, to the secretary by a preapproved deadline. The secretary must keep in secret till the deadline and posting and the bids may not be amended after posting.

I am a fiercely Canadian and I am of the view that all parts of Canada are collectively ours. We are all winners!

Sincerely,
Mahmud

Excellent ideas Mahmud! I agree they really should be implemented.

(if we don't, we risk having an awful "bad" bidding process some year)

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Excellent ideas Mahmud! I agree they really should be implemented.

(if we don't, we risk having an awful "bad" bidding process some year)

The point of the bidding process is to generate at least one good bid each and every year. It is an interactive process. Both Surrey and Burnaby bids submitted twice after suggestions from me. The Burnaby bid would have been rejected if they had not made at least one of the changes that I suggested. I could see from the financial statements that they implied that they were making the required payments to the youth fund but they never said so explicitly. If we follow the type of blind process suggested earlier then there would be no chance to improve the bids as new information came in. Guelph would not have been accepted as late.

Really in a perfect world the bid deadline should be at least a month before the AGM so that the bids can be sent to the voting members ahead of time for study. In that perfect world we would also have the financial statements to send the voting member at the same time. The initial bid proposals and financial statements should come in at least two weeks before that so that they can be vetted by the executive.

I endorsed all three bids as excellent bids. I also explained how I would be voting because of a promise I made when there was only one bid on the table. I did this because of questions about my statements clarifying aspects of the Guelph bid as somehow favouring and endorsing the Guelph bid. I would have been very comfortable with any of the three bids if they had won. They were all good bids. I liked all three bids.