LONG ROAD REMAINS IN CFL COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

In the most concise terms possible, collective bargaining continues between the CFL and the CFL Players Association.

“I’m confident we’re taking steps. It’s a process, a long one, and it’s still very early,” CFLPA executive director Brian Ramsay said Wednesday.

He offered the only on-the-record version — one that is intentionally concise and vague — of what’s happening as the two sides try to hammer out a new collective bargaining agreement before the current one expires May 18. Bargaining continues next week in Vancouver, then moves back to Toronto in April.

The league isn’t providing any updates, the players are holding conference calls in which Ramsay happily takes questions he cannot answer without breaking an agreement between the two sides not to bargain in public.

So he deflects all attempts at unearthing on-the-record specifics. On Wednesday, Ramsay said bargaining continued on so-called non-monetary contract language when the two sides met Monday and Tuesday in Calgary.

Contract language is a general rather than specific term, but it would most certainly include the player ratio and any proposed changes to it. That’s much more specific. So Ramsay would not speak to the ratio question, which was correctly identified by a reporter on the call as the elephant in the room.

The pachyderm was unleashed by a story published on the 3DownNation website last week following two days of bargaining in Toronto. It cited sources and claimed the league and the players “are in favour of reducing the number of national starters from seven to five.”

There was a rather immediate social media explosion and some CFL players past and present engaged in both healthy and snarky debate.

On Wednesday, Ramsay said he did not feel a need to address either his bargaining team or the membership at large with respect to the social media firestorm that ensued.

“Healthy debate is a good thing. … We have a very engaged membership, very engaged and passionate membership, and their engagement is refreshing on that specific issue and many others,” he said.

Pressed to speak specifically about the ratio question and whether it would be a divisive one for the membership, he cited it as a question of specifics and therefore declined to answer.

“We’ve got reps, like our membership, that all have their own views on specific issues, but what we are confident on as a group is that everyone is fully supportive of the package that we put in front of the employer.”

However, last week he felt the need to address the publication of the 3DownNation story, though not by naming the website or writer Justin Dunk.

“A recent report suggesting that any contract language between the CFL and CFLPA has been agreed to is completely and utterly false, and simply untrue,” Ramsay said on Twitter. “I can confirm we have not reached agreement on any discussions with the CFL. …

“It’s alarming that cited anonymous sources who have allegedly provided input for this story can be this uninformed. This negotiation is a delicate process and reporting wrong information can be damaging for everyone involved.” dbarnes@postmedia.com