A Special Meeting has been called by the President to review and vote on amendments to the corporation’s bylaws as provided by the Pickleball Canada Board of Directors.
Date: Tuesday, June 6, 2023
Time: 6:00 p.m. ET
Location: The meeting will be held electronically via Zoom.
Background
With the rapid growth pickleball has seen comes opportunity, challenge and, of course, responsibility. One major challenge we have is with our bylaws. These were established with a much smaller organization in mind and when we did not have provincial or territorial organizations, as we do now. We have, simply, outgrown the vision our predecessors held and it is time to upgrade.
PCO’s current bylaws are inadequate – they do not comply with the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act, they are inconsistent with the Canadian Sport Governance Code and are impractical (e.g. facilitating a vote of 46,000 is not practical). We need to update our bylaws and, to become an officially funded National Sport Organization with Sport Canada, and we need to do so now.
Meeting Information
Active members of Pickleball Canada (PCO) will receive attendance and voting instructions including information regarding registering to participate via email. To attend the virtual Special General Meeting, PCO members must register in advance of the meeting.
Voting instructions and registration information will be provided via email.
The following documents provide more information regarding the proposed amendments to the Bylaws:
Registration
Registering to Attend the SGM and vote:
Members must register to attend the SGM by 11:59pm ET on May 30. They must register using their PCO number as well as their personal email account associated with that number. This email account will be used for voting purposes at the SGM. Members who share email accounts will only be able to sign in once.
All valid members who have registered to attend the meeting will receive further information on meeting attendance and voting between June 1 – 3. This will likely include a test vote for all attending members to help prepare for the meeting.
As per any SGM, the motion supporting the new proposed bylaws will be put to the participants, who will then have the opportunity to vote at the meeting.
The results from the SGM voting will be combined with the Absentee Ballot votes that were previously cast. Valid proxy votes will be incorporated into the voting at the meeting.
Registering to vote via Absentee Ballot:
One does not need to attend the SGM to be eligible to vote on the new proposed PCO Bylaws. Members may instead choose to vote on a motion to adopt the new proposed PCO Bylaws via an Absentee Ballot, as per Section 3.16 of the current PCO Bylaws.
Members must register to vote by Absentee Ballot by 11:59pm ET on May 30. They must register using their PCO number as well as the email account associated with that number. This email account will be used for voting purposes on the Absentee Ballot.
All valid members who have registered to vote by Absentee Ballot will be issued an Absentee Ballot on the morning of June 1. An additional communication from PCO will also be sent to those registered members to advise of the voting process.
The results of the Absentee Ballot voting will be recorded by Sport Law (the voting scrutineer) and will be combined with the June 6 SGM voting result.
Voting via Proxy:
Proxies may be submitted to PCO in accordance with Section 3.14 of the current By-laws. Please note that should any member register to attend the meeting or vote via Absentee Ballot, and they also submit a proxy, this form will be deemed invalid.
Members may assign their vote to a proxyholder by 11:59pm ET on May 30. They may do so by sending a personal email to info@pickleballcanada.org no later than 11:59pm ET on May 30. The email must clearly indicate the full name and Membership Number of the member, the full name of the proxyholder, and the email address of the proxyholder (for voting purposes). The proxyholder is responsible for registering to attend the meeting.
No individual will hold more than one (1) proxy vote, as per Section 3.15 of the PCO Bylaws.
To email your proxy to PCO: info@pickleballcanada.org