[Racer26]

The notion that FIRST Canada is hurting for money is utterly ridiculous.

Each year, I've seen FIRST Canada provide various Canadian teams with grants to help them get to championship where qualified, and even helping them get to a second regional. There is no evidence to suggest that FIRST Canada is in a bad spot in terms of money.

Mr. Hobbins has clarified that they are not limiting rookies (as I'm sure we can all agree that would be silly), and that is good. There certainly is a pinch for capacity in Ontario, though.

Some teams struggled this year to get the two or three regionals they usually do without needing to travel great distances. Yes, Ontario has 5 regionals now. They're spread out though, and most of Ontario's teams hail from within half an hour of Toronto. GTRWest shrunk in size by ~50% in 2014, to a capacity of 30 (down from 65+), despite being geographically the closest regional to some 55ish Ontario teams. Hopefully districts helps to alleviate this problem, because Toronto area in particular needs more capacity.

To the poster talking about representation at CMP? Ontario is quite overrepresented at CMP, when compared against FiM and MAR. FiM and MAR both send around 10% of their teams, IIRC. I expect that FiM and MAR are sending about what HQ wants from a given area, and I would expect with a move to districts that Ontario will send fewer teams, BUT, they'll be of a higher caliber on average, because of the ranking system.