Americanborn CFL players shouldn’t be abandoned by Canada

WINNIPEG News that some politicians in the Canadian government have issues with any potential Canadian Football League bailout money ending up in the hands of American players was met with disbelief and frustration on Wednesday.

CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie has asked the government for a bailout of up to $150 million to get the league’s nine franchises through a season shortened or lost entirely because of the coronavirus pandemic.

It’s not clear what the CFL intends to do with the money, although the No. 1 priority must be keeping its franchises afloat, with no games in the near future and therefore no revenue coming in.

Some politicians have openly said any bailout would have to involve the players, who normally would not get paid until they play games.

Others have pushed back against that notion.

Liberal MP Peter Fragiskatos told TSN’S Rick Westhead Monday that it would be “alarming ” if any of the emergency relief money were used to pay American players who primarily live in the United States. Other government officials have expressed similar sentiments.

That drew many responses on Twitter from American players, including former league most outstanding player and Grey Cup MVP Mike Reilly, the quarterback of the B.C. Lions.

“It’s ‘alarming ’ that he would feel this way about U.S. players,” Reilly tweeted. “I have been paying Canadian taxes for a decade now, have two daughters with Canadian birth certificates, spent hundreds of hours giving back to Canadian communities. As have all CFL players, both Canadian and American.”

The CFL is clearly on a very slippery slope, and the issue of compensating American players is just the latest layer of ice.

“We Americans still have to pay taxes in Canada just as the Canadians do, in some cases more,” Hamilton Tiger-cats quarterback Dane Evans wrote. “So why would we not be eligible to receive the same benefits as the rest of the tax-paying employees in the CFL?”

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken an immediate and devastating toll on the CFL.

Ambrosie testified last week that the league lost $20 million as a whole last year and suggested it can’t survive a season with no games, or a truncated season, without assistance.

He said the league needs a $30 million cash infusion right away, another $90 million if the season is shortened and can’t start until September and $150 million if there is no season at all. Ambrosie said no season at all is the most likely scenario.

It says here some of that money — if the government grants it — has to go to the players, no matter where in the world they live.

For more than 70 years, American players have been coming north of the border to play Canadian football. Only a select few of them make big money. Most of them play for the league-minimum salary because they love the game and are hoping to get another shot at the NFL.

They contribute to the economy in nine Canadian cities and many of them choose to settle north of the border, start families and join the workforce after they retire from football, and yet there are some taxpayers opposed to even giving the American players assistance like employment insurance and the Canada Emergency Response Benefit.

There will be those who say American players can always be replaced, and that may be true to an extent, but what kind of league and what kind of country would turn its back on human beings like that in a time of need?

It doesn’t sound like something you’d expect from Canada.