Here is the quality of representation with which the Liberals stocked the Senate…
A former Mayor of Vancouver who now gets a free lunch on the backs of Canadian taxpayers wants any Canadian who plays a game of American football on his private property to go to jail for up to two years.
Larry Campbell should be jailed for being an idiot.
According to Bill S-238, a bill that received its first reading on Tuesday, NFL teams would be barred from playing regular season games in Canada. If found guilty of this egregious offence, perps could be jailed for up to two years and fined.
Our country is going to hell in a handcart driven by people we pay to be leaders. We’re screwed.
The bill, first exposed in Friday’s National Post by Sean FitzGerald, was introduced to “prevent the expansion of the Canadian Football League outside of Canada.”
According to the Post, Senator Larry Campbell spent weeks drafting the bill, amid speculation the NFL might be (and it’s a gigantic MIGHT be) moving closer to making Toronto the home of the Buffalo Bills. The Bills have agreed to play eight games at Rogers Centre over the next five years. That’s all. Five regular season games. The Bills are NOT moving to Canada, but like the Dave Matthews Band, Mariah Carey or Disney on Ice, the NFL is showing off its product in a country that watches and wagers on the game with gusto.
Campbell’s bill demands that “no person owning or operating a football team within a foreign league shall require or permit that team to play football in Canada.” It goes on to declare “no person shall play football within Canada as a player on a football team within a foreign league.” That also includes the Arena Football League which would be a great addition to our minor pro sports milieu in Winnipeg, but ol’ Larry obviously doesn’t give a rat’s ass about cities like Winnipeg.
“The CFL is a Canadian institution,” Mr. Campbell said in a recent interview with the Post. “We like to protect all of our other cultural icons, but there doesn’t seem to be the same vigour with the CFL. I don’t think that’s true, and I’m going to prove that.
“There’s always this idea that, if it’s your own money you’re spending, you can do whatever you want. Sorry. That doesn’t happen in my world. You should be looking out for the good of the country and the good of your community.”
I guess I’m not a very good Canadian, Larry, because, like the vast majority of my friends and colleagues, I’d love to see the NFL come to Canada. As well as the Arena League, for that matter. NFL football is the most interesting game in the most brilliantly operated sports league in North America and Canada should be proud that the NFL would even consider someday placing a franchise here (even if that franchise is located in Toronto which, in professional sports terms, REALLY isn’t a Canadian city anyway).
If placing an NFL franchise in Toronto, does indeed kill the Canadian Football League, then it never should have existed in the first place. If the league is that weak, it deserves to die. If having competition in Toronto kills the rest of the CFL, then it really wasn’t very strong in the first place, was it?
Frankly, it would be a much better idea if Campbell sponsored a bill that would pay for new CFL stadiums in Ottawa, Halifax, Quebec City, Winnipeg, Regina, Hamilton, Toronto and Montreal. Banning the NFL would only create resentment. On the other hand, improving the lot of the CFL, would create excitement.
But Larry, like almost all politicians, is too fundamentally stupid to understand that.
This bill requires approval from both the Senate and the House of Commons. Hopefully, someone with an actual brain will stop this insanity before it becomes law.
Jail terms for playing football? Throw this in with those kangaroo courts known as Human Rights Tribunals and it becomes painfully obvious that the people who run our nation are sick.