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If fans don’t fill the seats, should the CFL get government aid to stay alive? “Yes” or “No” on CFL help?
Here’s the question: If fans stay away from home games, should the CFL get government aid to stay alive?
Does the Canadian Football League really matter anymore? I hope so, but I’m not sure. Honestly, I don’t know what the CFL is any more. If you’ve got ideas to share – please, no comparisons with the NFL – I’m interested in seeing them.
The first team I ever paid attention to was the Toronto Argonauts. It was a long time ago – 1950, to be exact. Al Dekdebrun (who?) was the quarterback. Ulysses Curtis (who?) and Bill Bass (who?) were the running backs. Toronto won the Grey Cup that year, beating the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 13-0. All were among a rare group at the time: U.S guys known for gridiron purpose as immigrants.
This happened a full four years before Jackie Parker, the best player in CFL history, became an Edmonton Eskimo and seven years before Jim Finks arrived from the National Football League to develop running back Earl Lunsford and quarterback Joe Kapp for the Calgary Stampeders. They were imports, too.
There’s no real room to question whether these Alberta franchises have been the brightest and most stable of all Canadian franchises, east and west, since that distant time.
Equally valuable, some of the time, have been the Bombers and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. All the rest have staggered more often than a room full of heavy drinkers on New Year’s Eve; except perhaps for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, they’re still off balance. The B.C. Lions, despite the presence of Mike Reilly, who might be the best quarterback in the league, drew mostly yawns from spectators.
The Argos play home games in a facility where fans come disguised as empty seats. The Montreal Alouettes had a loyal owner who finally got tired of writing million-dollar cheques to cover team costs, so the league took control. About six months ago, two Toronto men bought the franchise. How long before league president Randy Ambrosie has to step up and take control again?
Ottawa had a terrible year on the field and a poor one at the gate last year. For billions of reasons tied logically to COVID-19, the outlook is not promising there.
Millions of words have been written and spoken about Ambrosie’s big international dreams. Accountants have spent countless hours attempting to find the basis for his claim that the league needs about $30 million from the government to play at least a partial 2020 season. If no games are played, he estimates the need is more than 100 million so the CFL can operate in 2021.
Provincial governments have stepped up to help individual teams: then-Premier Don Getty introduced a fund to help Edmonton and Calgary; Saskatchewan’s political bosses understood the province-wide love of the Roughriders and showed admirable tolerance when necessary.
For me, the Grey Cup has always been a mainstay in Canadian sports. Mature writers often referred to it as “the grand national drunk” because of the hordes who scheduled their annual holidays to attend. To ride eastward to Toronto on the old Grey Cup trains was a exercise in durability, especially if you had to write for publication on the way.
Prairie cities have continued to treat Grey Cup week as a celebration. Great times are had, civic and provincial budgets are fattened. A large number of games, regular season and playoffs, are exciting. Speed means more than bulk in the CFL. Many of the talented import players – Pinball Clemons and Tom Wilkinson are prime examples – have stayed in Canada to benefit our game.
All returns to the question: if fans stay away from home games, should the CFL get government aid to stay alive?
I vote yes, but I’ve been wrong before.
From the Fraser Institute
By Jake Fuss and Grady Munro
There would have been 1.5 million more Canadians who donated to charity in 2023—and $755.5 million more in donations—had Canadians given to the same extent they did 10 years prior
According to recent polling, approximately one in five Canadians have skipped paying a bill over the past year so they can buy groceries. As families are increasingly hard-pressed to make ends meet, this undoubtedly means more and more people must seek out food banks, shelters and other charitable organizations to meet their basic necessities.
And each year, Canadians across the country donate their time and money to charities to help those in need—particularly around the holiday season. Yet at a time when the relatively high cost of living means these organizations need more resources, new data published by the Fraser Institute shows that the level of charitable giving in Canada is actually falling.
Specifically, over the last 10 years (2013 to 2023, the latest year of available data) the share of tax-filers who reported donating to charity fell from 21.9 per cent to 16.8 per cent. And while fewer Canadians are donating to charity, they’re also donating a smaller share of their income—during the same 10-year period, the share of aggregate income donated to charity fell from 0.55 per cent to 0.52 per cent.
To put this decline into perspective, consider this: there would have been 1.5 million more Canadians who donated to charity in 2023—and $755.5 million more in donations—had Canadians given to the same extent they did 10 years prior. Simply put, this long-standing decline in charitable giving in Canada ultimately limits the resources available for charities to help those in need.
On the bright side, despite the worrying long-term trends, the share of aggregate income donated to charity recently increased from 0.50 per cent in 2022 to 0.52 per cent in 2023. While this may seem like a marginal improvement, 0.02 per cent of aggregate income for all Canadians in 2023 was $255.7 million.
The provinces also reflect the national trends. From 2013 to 2023, every province saw a decline in the share of tax-filers donating to charity. These declines ranged from 15.4 per cent in Quebec to 31.4 per cent in Prince Edward Island.
Similarly, almost every province recorded a drop in the share of aggregate income donated to charity, with the largest being the 24.7 per cent decline seen in P.E.I. The only province to buck this trend was Alberta, which saw a 3.9 per cent increase in the share of aggregate income donated over the decade.
Just as Canada as a whole saw a recent improvement in the share of aggregate income donated, so too did many of the provinces. Indeed, seven provinces (except Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador) saw an increase in the share of aggregate income donated to charity from 2022 to 2023, with the largest increases occurring in Saskatchewan (7.9 per cent) and Alberta (6.7 per cent).
Canadians also volunteer their time to help those in need, yet the latest data show that volunteerism is also on the wane. According to Statistics Canada, the share of Canadians who volunteered (both formally and informally) fell by 8 per cent from 2018 to 2023. And the total numbers of hours volunteered (again, both formal and informal) fell by 18 per cent over that same period.
With many Canadians struggling to make ends meet, food banks, shelters and other charitable organizations play a critical role in providing basic necessities to those in need. Yet charitable giving—which provides resources for these charities—has long been on the decline. Hopefully, we’ll see this trend turn around swiftly.
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