Politicians join chorus against CFL commissioner's changes

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Published Oct 06, 2025 • 4 minute read

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Grey Cup media event attendees From left, Richard Genaille, Manitoba Metis Federation Minister of Sport and Youth; Scott Gillingham, Mayor of Winnipeg; Wade Miller, president/CEO Winnipeg Blue Bombers; Tracy Schmidt, Manitoba Minister of Education and Early Childhood Learning; and Colin Ferguson, president/CEO Travel Manitoba attended an event at Princess Auto Stadium in Winnipeg on Oct. 6, 2025 for a Grey Cup media event. Photo by Paul Friesen /Winnipeg SunArticle content

The political speeches were nearing an end at Monday’s Grey Cup news conference when an uninvited guest appeared outside, peeking through the window.

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“How Canadian is that – a Canada goose wants to join us here,” Richard Genaille of the Manitoba Metis Federation said, drawing laughs from the assembled media types and others in the conference room at the home of the Blue Bombers.

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While Genaille welcomed that particular slice of Canadiana, he abhors the prospect of seeing other pieces sliced from the CFL in the form of rule changes announced by the league a couple of weeks ago.

“Everything is actually bothering me,” Genaille, the MMF’s minister of sport and youth, told me after the formal proceedings. “Because it’s not CFL. They’ve got their game in the States, the NFL and all that. But we’ve got our game. Our Canadian game. It’s different.”

It won’t be as different in two years.

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The people who run the CFL unilaterally decided to shorten the field to 100 yards, the end zones to 15 and to move the goal posts to the back of the end zones.

Those three moves mimic the American game, while removing some of the aspects that make the three-down version unique.

Missed-field-goal returns, for example, will all but disappear. One of the most exciting plays in the game, erased with the stroke of first-year commissioner Stewart Johnston’s pen, co-signed by the board of governors.

Genaille makes no bones about how that makes him feel.

“Like they’re betraying us, the fans,” he said. “I’d tell him no. Hold off on it.”

Genaille and other political figures were at Monday’s news conference to applaud three moves by the Blue Bombers, including plans to supply flag-football kits to more than 900 schools in Manitoba and to take the Grey Cup on tour to the North, with stops in fire-ravaged Flin Flon, Thompson, and Churchill.

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All Grey Cup signage and literature will also be bilingual.

Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham loves those moves, but is far less enthralled with the ones the CFL is making.

“I just like the distinction of the Canadian game,” Gillingham said. “I love the rouge. It’s an anomaly. A game can be decided on this bizarre, unique rule in the CFL called the rouge. I’d like to see it stay.”

The single point will disappear on field-goal attempts that go wide of the uprights, the CFL claiming that’s no way to decide a big game.

So another play unique to Canada – a player punting the ball out of the end zone to avoid giving up the point, and occasionally the other team trying to kick it back in – will also be mostly confined to the dust bins of history.

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Yet, the CFL’s big thinkers say their changes will make the game more exciting and get fans to fill some of the vast quantities of empty seats in the majority of cities.

“I do understand Winnipeg’s market and maybe Saskatchewan’s market are maybe a bit unique in the CFL,” Gillingham said. “I know that’s not the case in every other city. So for the future of the game, I do appreciate some changes may have to be made to attract more spectators to the game.”

But will they? He’s not so sure.

“If any rules are being changed to attract more fans while still maintaining a uniqueness of the CFL compared to the NFL game, I’m open to it,” the Mayor said. “But I like the rouge, I like the goal posts where they are. There’s nothing like the thrill of someone returning a missed field goal.”

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Gillingham grew up on a farm west of Carman, his dad driving him to Bombers games when he was a kid. The two have season tickets to this day.

He and his friends have debated the rule changes, some of which, like changing to a 35-second running clock between plays, he has no problem with.

Like every fan across the country, and every player, GM and coach, for that matter, he wasn’t consulted about the changes.

They just landed with a thud – like a downed goose – two Mondays ago.

If the commissioner thinks the change is going to get more fans to peek through the glass to watch the Canadian game, Genaille says he’s got another think coming.

“It won’t,” he said. “The outcry probably from right across Canada is going to be the same. That’s not for us.”

Genaille’s passion was palpable, much like that of the fans who’ve sent emails and signed petitions denouncing the shift to an American style of game, especially at a time when Canadian pride is swelling due to unfriendly pushes from south of the border.

Canadian players, such as B.C. quarterback Nathan Rourke, and coaches, such as Winnipeg’s Mike O’Shea, have spoken out against the moves, too.

Genaille’s last words to me echoed what O’Shea had said two weeks earlier.

“It’s our game.”

paul.friesen@kleinmedia.ca

X: @friesensunmedia

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Politicians join chorus against CFL commissioner’s changes

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