“belligerent” “diatribe” “Vancouver social activist issues” “social warrior mentality”

I am a candidate for the 2018 Mountain Equipment Co-op Board of Directors election. As a part of my candidacy, I receive questions about my platform from members around the country.

For reference, my platform can be seen here:

This weekend, one of those e-mails was particularly interesting because it came from a previous Director of the co-operative. After reading the e-mail, I have more resolve than ever to try to bring change to the Board. I have withheld the identity of the author for the time being but I encourage them to identify themselves to engage in a public dialogue.

Here is the letter in its entirety and my responses are below:

Sunday, April 30th, 2018 12:49 PM Steve,



How would you ensure your participation and presence on the Board would be useful? For years you have been belligerent with the Board and management. Making accusations around pay, intent of people and references to motivations of the Board and management to be less than dutiful. With that sort of history could you ever be an effective Board member?



Further, you have stated many times, that you are a strategic thinker, so please answer the following:



1. You mention board pay and CEO pay. It takes up 10–15% of your diatribe. Yet the amounts are so immaterial both to the actual finances and effect on moral, that it is beyond irrelevant. How do you square this?



2. You mention CO-OP, yet do you concede that members may have a different sense of what that means then you and your tribe. Are you able to put your beliefs behind the greater good. Specifically if you were presented with data that showed most people want gear and are not horribly concerned about the Vancouver social activist issues, could you serve that silent majority?



3. The mountain? Seriously, this is your thing? What about capital structure, financing working capital, should we be in the business of manufacturing, or more in distribution and retail? There are so many other issues. Once again if you were presented with facts that the mountain could be an obstacle for our purpose, that is some potential new members and new Canadians, find the symbol intimidating and wont engage, would you be more open?



In essence can you move past the idealistic social warrior mentality and be a prudent leader of a half billion dollar business. Because all I see are false options and silly platitudes. i.e. every company in the West wants its employees engaged to build careers, that is not very enlightening, who wouldn’t.



Look forward to your answers. PS when I ran twice and won twice, I answered every question.

My response:

Re:

With that sort of history could you ever be an effective Board member?

As an engaged member, I have acted with professionalism when raising reasonable questions about total compensation and about the structural alignment of the incentives of the Board vs the purposes of the co-operative. The majority of my interactions with the Board are on the public record through the Annual General Meetings and I stand behind my conduct.

Directors are required to be independent and it is important for the Board to contain a diverse set of viewpoints. If the membership elects me to represent their interests as a Director, then the other Directors would have a duty to consider my input.

Re:

1. You mention board pay and CEO pay. It takes up 10–15% of your diatribe. Yet the amounts are so immaterial both to the actual finances and effect on moral, that it is beyond irrelevant. How do you square this?

One of the core responsibilities of the Board is to hire the CEO and set their compensation. Knowledge of CEO compensation is essential for the membership to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of the Board: that is why every publicly traded company reports CEO compensation. It’s also why CEO compensation is reported by all Crown Corporations, by all Credit Unions in BC and also by REI.

When transparency is a principle of an organisation, it must be practiced consistently to maintain morale. I believe that transparency should be a core principle of any democratic organization.

Re:

2. You mention CO-OP, yet do you concede that members may have a different sense of what that means then you and your tribe. Are you able to put your beliefs behind the greater good. Specifically if you were presented with data that showed most people want gear and are not horribly concerned about the Vancouver social activist issues, could you serve that silent majority?

What it means to be “the co-op” is defined very clearly by two documents:

A) The BC Co-operative Association Act. This is a provincial Act that defines the laws that the co-operative must follow.

B) The Rules of Cooperation for Mountain Equipment Co-operative (which include the Purposes of the Co-operative). The rules can only be amended by a vote of the membership.

As a Director, I would take my duty seriously to represent the interests of the entire membership while also ensuring adherence to the relevant laws and the rules of our co-operative.

I can’t answer you question specifically because I am not sure what you consider to be a “Vancouver social activist issue”. Do you consider self-propelled wilderness oriented recreation to fall into that category? That is one of the core Purposes of the Co-operative. I would be derelict in my duties to overlook that “social activist issue” unless the rules were amended through a vote of the membership. Perhaps you can provide more detail on what you view as a “Vancouver social activist issue”?

Re:

3. The mountain? Seriously, this is your thing? What about capital structure, financing working capital, should we be in the business of manufacturing, or more in distribution and retail? There are so many other issues. Once again if you were presented with facts that the mountain could be an obstacle for our purpose, that is some potential new members and new Canadians, find the symbol intimidating and wont engage, would you be more open?

A brand is massively important to a retail company and the logo plays a critical role in communicating the brand. As a member, I was not presented with compelling evidence that abandoning the iconic and highly respected logo was an effective use of funds. For decades, the logo made mountains less intimidating for Canadians of all walks of life. Overall, it is my opinion that the new logo has created more confusion than inclusiveness and that there would have been more effective ways to welcome a broader member base. That said, I have not proposed a complete switch to the old logo in my platform as that would involve incurring the costs of a logo change all over again .

Re:

In essence can you move past the idealistic social warrior mentality and be a prudent leader of a half billion dollar business.

The statement seems to suggest that being socially responsible and being financially prudent are in conflict. The reality is that the co-op grew to be financially strong because of its commitment to being socially responsible.

In addition, I believe that my positions on social responsibility are very reasonable and don’t represent any type of an extreme. It would be helpful if you could give an example of the type of socially responsible position that you are concerned about.

Unfortunately, the financial strength of the co-op has been put at risk in recent years. There are many ways to measure the financial health of a retail company but one simple measure is as follows:

Start by looking at how much revenue the company generated through its core business (selling gear in the case of MEC). Take that number and subtract the cost of that gear and then also subtract the selling and administration expenses. How much profit is left over? In the most recently reported fiscal year (which was longer than a normal fiscal year), the answer at MEC was a loss of over $10 million.

After considering your questions, I remain convinced that a non-recommended candidate should be elected to improve board accountability and independence.

Sincerely,

Steve Jones

candidate_jones@mec.ca