FORKED TONGUE

LACROSSE CANADA SPEAKETH WITH FORKED TONGUE

Context: In the late 80s there was a great basketball player by the name of George Gervin whose nickname was ‘’The Iceman’’ as he was always cool and under control. The NBA produced a poster of Gervin titled ‘’The iceman cometh’’. I was tickled by the word ‘’cometh’’ which was not part of my English vocabulary! I was always fascinated, also, by the words my friend Frank Benedict used when he was talking about relationships…’’White man speaks with forked tongue’’. This has led me to title this paper ‘’Lacrosse Canada speaketh with forked tongue’’.

Because Lacrosse Canada does speak with forked tongue.

Speaketh is archaic English; it’s old fashioned; language of the past; and speaking with forked tongue is also archaic; it does not belong to today’s world. It does not belong with democratic associations. Especially at Lacrosse Canada.

When people get together to create an Association, they are collectively pursuing a common goal and come together to cooperate, obtain results, share information and to seek progress. They need the truth if they are to be collectively successful. But what often happens is that a small group takes political control of the Association and runs it as if was their own pet project often delicately sliding away from the principles and values professed by the creators of the group or association. This seems to be the case at Lacrosse Canada.

Lacrosse Canada professes that it operates with transparency and accountability but often behaves as if transparency and accountability were archaic values lost in the tumbling world of false efficiency. Two recent events help to illustrate and clarify our point.

The first one deals with a proposal initially presented to the members by the VP in charge of Administration in November 2023. It dealt with a new dispersal of votes allowing each province to have ONE vote at AGMs and SAGMs contrary to the traditional procedure where the number of votes were in relationship to the number of registered members per province. The 2023 proposal was defeated BUT the VP Admin came back in 2024 and explained the rationale he was following; ‘’This is to align with legislation, Sport Canada in recommendation of governance changes’’.

THINK LACROSSE contacted Sport Canada and was informed that in no way Sport Canada ever supported or suggested a change in the voting processes for National Sport Governing bodies. The proposal was defeated again but the issue served as a full proof that Lacrosse Canada was speaking with forked tongue, hoping that the members would see the necessity of supporting the proposal fearing to lose Sport Canada funding. This was an important ‘’faux pas’’ as it illustrates manipulation, misleading information and a will to deceive the members. This was a matter of integrity and it cannot be forgotten.

The second situation deals with the false peddling of numbers at Lacrosse Canada. For just about a decade Lacrosse Canada falsely pretended, in every post, that ‘’our organization is comprised of 11 member associations representing nearly 85,000 individual participants’’. The statement was false and when Lacrosse Canada finally recognized its faux pas it changed its posts to read that’’ our organization is comprised of 11 member associations representing nearly 60,000 individual participants’’. Caught with its pants down Lacrosse Canada pushed the envelope by retroactively changing every post since 2020 with ‘’the new numbers’’. Everyone who has visited Lacrosse Canada’s website since 2020 has been inundated with the 85,000 false number; now if they read the posts 60,000 appears on every post as if it had always been that number. Lacrosse Canada almost has a PhD in ‘’forkedtongueness’’! Instead of simply informing the members of the exact number of registered participants Lacrosse Canada bent over backwards inviting everyone to question its integrity and transparency. How low can you go?

We are now in a position to see that Lacrosse Canada in its new website is somehow ‘’hiding’’ much of the significant information required by the registered and paying members who could want to get involved within a ‘’vibrant’’ national association if only they were properly informed.

Lacrosse Canada has not deleted its strategic plan (2025-2028) from its website. Now why would a transparent national association not want to make its plan easily accessible and promote it on its website? This is not a ‘’oops, sorry moment, my bad’’ it’s a voluntary decision to shelve the important strategic plan from everyone’s attention. Why was the ‘’plan’’ not presented on a post informing the members of its existence and how to quickly locate it on the website? Why not have it presented to the readers by Lacrosse Canada’s president? Why is there not a ’’web forum’’ between the president and the readers specifically on the strategic plan? An open space of communication where the president would explain and justify the elements of his plan. An open communication within a ‘’vibrant’’ national association on its plan for the next four years.

Lacrosse Canada has not deleted its 2025-26 budget from its website. They just put it out there if you can find it. No explanation. No information on how to access it and no possibility for the readers and paying members to ask questions to the treasurer about the budget. This is not a staff budget; it’s a Board of Directors budget and the treasurer (if Lacrosse Canada had one) should be LC’s spokesperson in this matter. Why not an open flow of communication between the Treasurer and the readers and paying members?

Lacrosse Canada has not deleted the financial statements and audits of the last two years.

Lacrosse Canada has DELETED the minutes of its Board meetings of the last two years. Sport Canada in its quest for better governance within governing bodies had demanded that National Associations post the minutes of their Board meetings on their website. Why is Lacrosse Canada defying its funding agency and depriving the members of important information pertaining to the democratic life of the Association. This is not a ‘’my bad’’ moment; it’s a voluntary decision not to act with transparency and to deprive the members of the possibility for them to appraise the accountability of their elected Board members.

Lacrosse Canada has DELETED its annual calendar of events and the list of important meetings of different and functional committees. No one knows when committees meet, who is on the committees, what they discuss and what their decisions are. Vibrant association indeed!

What Lacrosse Canada has not deleted is the post inviting the paying members to donate to help Lacrosse Canada develop and manage the game in Canada! How cynical can one be.

Lacrosse Canada speaketh with forked tongue but needs to stop this aberrant behavior in order to regain some form of credibility. Not speaking the truth is archaic; it is not the way successful and democratic associations behave. Not speaking the truth and correctly informing the members is the strategy of losers who fear their members and who come together to protect their secrets and their internal codes.

Speak the truth and the truth will set you free.