Only 4 months left for CCA President Kinash

Eddie Arzouian

Four months, kids!


Don't forget to contact your provincial association presidents and ask them who they plan to vote for and why. Don't send them to the Whitehorse Annual General Meeting in November with carte blanche on what should be YOUR vote, not theirs.

Do not saddle cycling with another three years of Bill Kinash's inaction, delay and failure. Do not let him hire any more people for the Canadian CYCLING Association who know even less than he does about the sport, which is very little to begin with.
We can begin to see light at the end of the tunnel.

The question is now not if Bill Kinash will be sacked but who will replace him. That`s some progress.

My choice would still be Lesley Tomlinson of British Columbia. The CCA has never had a woman President. It has never had a President from BC. Yet, women have been our best international riders and BC is the most dynamic cycling province in Canada right now. Ms. Tomlinson has been on the CCA Board of Directors for years. She has been strong advocate for marketing the sport properly, something Kinash has failed miserably to do. Tomlinson has also made great efforts and taken great strides in bringing cycling to schools and kids.

Ask yourselves:

Why has the CCA merchandise not yet begun to be sold? The link is still empty on the plagiarized web site after eight months or so.

Have you heard anything from the CCA-Hamilton Foundation apart from by-laws being ready 14 months late?

Where is their Annual Report for 2004 promised by Bill Kinash last December 2004?

Has the Foundation done anything at all to find new sponsors, partner and donors as MANDATED by the CCA in Bill Kinash`s Annual Report for 2003?


For those of you with your heads still in the sand it is now mid-summer 2005, you can come up for air, nothing has changed in two and three-quarter years, except that we have actually lost more events.


Don't forget to add to the list below:

I will also begin my list of unaccomplishments for Bill for 2004-2005. I will make the list far more detailed than that I did for 2004 which had 25 points.

List of CCA Unaccomplishments for 2004-2005

1. CCA fails to elect an Olympic and World Champion medal winner and TV personality Curt Harnett to its board of Directors squandering yet another excellent public relations opportunity.

2. The 2005 AGM is scheduled for Whitehorse, Yukon, (cycling hotbed, media capital)

3. The CCA fails to audits its books properly. This lead to a delay in receiving Sports Canada funding. CCA is forced to fire their long time accountant Financial Coordinator Debbie Villeneuve, which makes you wonder if this sloppy management has been going on for years under Hutsebaut and Jolly and they didn't care or could not figure it out?

4. CCA Board of Directors fails to approve the by-laws of the new CCA Foundation. So the Foundation formed in Feb. 2004 has done nothing for ten months and cannot do anything for who knows how long until approved. No sponsors have been found. No partnerships formed. No donations taken in. We still do not know where the $500,000 is? We do not know if the CCA really controls it.

5. CCA hires a Communications and Marketing Coordinator with self admitted, " non-cycling background and knowing pretty much zilch (sic) about the sport " -Mat Litalien. Employee subsequently leaves the position for Hockey Canada a few months or so later. Important position stay empty for months again. The CCA then fills the position with somebody who has ZERO CYCLING EXPERIENCE and a mediocre track record elsewhere.

6. CCA launches a "new", "national" road series that has no new races. It only goes to three provinces, making it hardly national. It only lasts a few weeks. It does not even have enough prize money to cover expenses for the winner. It lacks a sponsor of any kind.

7. CCA President Bill Kinash fails for two months to congratulate Lori Ann Meunzer on the her Olympic Gold medal. News of this snub and major communications mistake is published across Canada in a Canadian Press Report (Dec. 08 2004). Meunzer says, "If I was holding my breath I'd be dead".

8. In the same news piece CCA President Bill Kinash displays his complete lack of marketing skills by publicly stating to CP, “marketing them (Olympic medal winners) to aid the sport may be something to consider in the future.” Again, excuses and delays and an apparent lack of understanding that there is a very limited shelf-life to an Olympic medal. If you do not use it quickly you lose it. Basic marketing.

9. In his Christmas Greeting Bill Kinash tells us the CCA President and the Board of Directors are not responsible for the operations of the CCA. Mr. Kinash says that is the responsibility of the Director General (who is in hiding since May 2004) or the Chief Operating Officer (who does not yet exist and will not for another month at least). So the CCA has been and is rudderless according to the President himself. Apparently the buck does not stop with him.
(Update: Bill Kinash hires a Chief Operating Officer, Steve Lacelle, with no cycling experience. In other words, the guy running the national sport body knows nothing about the sport he is running. A comforting thought. That's how you end up with 36-kms. Elite Men's Criterium championships, an insult to riders, the sport and the title. Apparently the CCA and Bill Kinash learned nothing from the fiasco in Hamilton 2003 when other know-no-cycling people were running things... Isn't the definition of stupidity to keep repeating the same mistake over and over again?)



10. CCA botches its new Official National Criterium Championship making it into a 36-kms joke.

11. Nationals results go virtually unpublished across Canada. Another media disaster from CCA Chief Operating Officer Steve Lacelle and newly hired Director of Marketing Operations, Kim Sebrango who apparently did nothing to market the championships or lay the ground work for future sponsorship.




(feel free to add your own CCA unaccomplishments to this list....)