Dear EC: Perhaps you have not been following the election of our new Prime Minister (who am I kidding? You are in Ottawa, for cripe’s sake), but in the very unlikely case that you haven’t, I’d like to bring to your attention the following piece of heartwarming news: the Harper days are finally over. With the impending exit of the G8’s least charismatic leader (not to mention his actual relevant shortcomings), we can say goodbye to Stephen’s policy of ‘information on a need-to-know basis, and you don’t need to know’. The words ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’ are two of the most overused and under-delivered expressions of the outgoing government’s tenure. They would almost seem to have no real meaning at all any more. Almost.
Coming as I do from a vocation such as journalism, which depends entirely on communication, I believe that in the world of political organizations (and EC very much falls into that category), there is no such thing as TMI. Remembering the words of a past EC CEO whose eloquence shall never be surpassed by his successors, if you want to do something in an organization that the members have the potential not to like, your first and best step is to tell them about it. As Akaash once told me, the people’s objection to a decision or action is often not an objection to the action itself, but to the fact that the people were not kept informed about the matter. More often than not, if you tell people what you plan to do and you throw in the bonus information of the logic and ethics behind your decision, they will not protest.
Here is why I am feeling so very deflated that EC is displaying an attitude of more secrecy than ever right now: if you go looking for the dressage qualification criteria for the 2016 Olympics on the DC website, as I did last week, you will be greeted by the following text:
“The 2016 Olympic Criteria is (sic*) available to Canadian high performance athletes upon request.”
(*Criteria isn’t an it but a they, so therefore the is should be an are.)
I have been writing about Canadian dressage for 15 years. In all of that time, I (and the rest of the world) have never been denied access to qualification criteria for any championship or major Games. As I said to Amie O’Shaughnessy, EC’s Director of High Performance, in response to her demand to know for what (potentially nefarious) reasons I might want to see the criteria, this is uncharted territory for me. All I know is that if I were to feel the desire to talk up Canada’s Olympic hopefuls in Horse Sport or on this blog over the coming months, and give them some free publicity as they work their butts off to try and qualify for what is still the pinnacle of any athlete’s career, it will be rather difficult to do that if I don’t even know what the criteria are.
I have not yet received a response from Amie to my request to share with you the reasons for DC/EC’s decision to put the Dressage criteria into a Harper-esque information vault, so I am not at liberty (yet) to share the reasons I was given. I hope to have permission in the coming days, so that I can show you just how ‘parallel universe’ is the rationale that led to the criteria being made unavailable. Which reminds me: I need to send Amie another email and ask her on what basis DC/EC will determine who exactly is eligible to see the document – or maybe they are keeping those criteria secret too. But as I pointed out in my initial message to EC regarding the denial of access to the Rio criteria, I’m not sure the organization even has the legal right to withhold them from me.
I’ve been a member of EC since before the current HP Director was born – since the days when Dave Esworthy was President of what used to be called the Canadian Horse Shows Association. The insult I feel as the only journalist in the entire universe who actually cares what the Rio dressage criteria contain pales in comparison with the insult and injury I feel as a member in good standing of EC and DC. It’s almost enough to make a person want to just walk away and never ask another question or write another article.
Almost.
But not quite.
At least I am not looking for the Eventing criteria. True to that discipline committee’s perennial MO to keep everyone in the dark all the time about everything, here is what you find when you go to the Eventing Olympic link:
