TORONTO — TICO has relaunched its Industry Director voting with a two-step process.
Two positions for Industry Director are up for grabs on the TICO board.
TICO originally planned to hold the vote at its AGM, held virtually on Sept. 26. After a technical glitch that night – the system timed out for some users during the vote, limiting their ability to vote for two Directors – TICO announced it would defer the vote.
Registration for the voting platform opened at 10 a.m. this morning, and will remain open until 10 a.m. (EDT) on Fri. Oct. 6.
Once registered, eligible voters can submit their online vote on the voting platform from Tues., Oct. 10 at 10 a.m. to Wed., Oct. 11 at 5 p.m.
Anyone who registered for the AGM as a voting member or are a voting member who did not register for/attend the AGM, will receive more information about next steps this morning, said TICO. “Only authorized individuals are eligible to vote (e.g., sole proprietor, partner, officer, director). AGM attendees who are members of the public or are not authorized individuals within a TICO registrant are not eligible to vote.”
As per five orders from Ontario’s Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery, announced earlier this year, the TICO board will have nine members, with a 3/3/3 composition: three Industry Directors, three Public Directors and three Minister’s appointees.
The election process will bring in two new Industry Directors, joining a third Industry Director already on the board, whose term continues until 2024.
A total of 9 travel industry executives are on the ballot for the Industry Director vote.
Also as per the Ministry’s orders, TICO will establish an industry advisory council, comprised of members representing the interests of travel agents and travel wholesalers to report to and advise the board.
“UNFAIR & UNDEMOCRATIC”
One candidate for the Industry Director positions said reopening the voting to all registrants “is completely unfair and undemocratic.”
The candidate went on to say: “An election took place on September 26 where 160 people assembled to vote. Those 160 people should be reassembled to cast their ballots. How can TICO management arbitrarily make this decision? Many candidates worked hard to obtain proxies for the AGM and now TICO has to nullify them. TICO allowed all of the proxies to be counted for the election of the Public Directors. Since they now can’t be used for the Industry Director election, perhaps a new election for the public directions should be held.”
The candidate added: “Now whoever is elected will have the cloud of ‘unfairly’ elected hanging over their heads for their term. TICO really made a big mistake today by reopening the registration to vote for the new industry directors. There was a clear cut-off date for registration, and only those who registered should be allowed to vote at future vote. That registration deadline now means nothing. Isn’t TICO embarrassed by taking this position? Of all the positions they could have taken to re-vote, this is the most undemocratic choice. What should have happened is that all registrants with a vote who were on the call, should be permitted to vote. Proxies obtained should count. Anyone who was not on the [virtual AGM call] should not be permitted to vote, simple.”
Another candidate had this to say: “I found it incredibly frustrating to sit through that [Sept. 26] meeting, make people wait till the last minute to vote, and then have a breakdown in the voting platform. I do believe there are a lot of things in TICO that are broken, and this incident was perhaps a ‘snapshot’ of that. I’m hoping that it will cause registrants to sit up and take notice, especially the ones who didn’t attend the AGM and did not appoint a proxy for their vote.”
Travelweek’s coverage of TICO’s Sept. 26 AGM can be found here.
