There are a few factors.........the only positive reason really would be the "growing the game" component and growing the game could lead to a bigger pie in the future as the game got more of a national presence. Your right, though, it would need a big time buy in which is complicated. Not the least of the complicating factors is "history"...I only use the FA Cup example as I am very familiar with it but you/we/I have to recognize that it is not that long ago that the FA had more power than the League and the FA Cup existed before the league and that the FA Cup used to be more prestigious than the league (you don't even have to go back to far in the 20th century to find the point when the FA Cup final was the most watched match in the world football calendar).....so they had rules governing the tournament before the money all shifted. None of that can be said about the CSA's relationship with any of the leagues here. Yes the CSA existed before any of them but the power strucutre didn't. So your question about the "big" clubs buying into a gate sharing structure is very valid......just as, today, if it didn't exist in England would big clubs accept it as an idea?
Not sure how things work in other leagues, but in Germany, lower-tier teams are always matched up with higher-tier teams in the early rounds of the DFB Pokal (Cup). The lower-tier team travels to play at the higher-tier team's stadium and gets a pretty decent cut of the money. Soccer in Germany seems to be more about finances than fairness though, so I'm not sure such an approach would be welcomed in Canada. In addition, the longer travel distances would be an issue--fans of a lower-tier team would probably not mind the commute within Germany to follow their team, but I don't know that Edmonton fans would fly to Vancouver, Toronto, or Montreal just to watch a cup game.
That's what makes it tricky to do these things in Canada, the sparse population spread over a wide area. That's why I often look to Australia to see what they do because they're pretty much identical to us in this respect. Of course, what Australia does is just have the A-league for professional football and that's it, no domestic multi-tier cup (but they are looking into having one).
http://www.concacaf.com/article/changes-for-future-amway-canadian-championships FCE and Ottawa are already eliminated from the 2015-16 CCL. Weird. I'm not sure I agree with the new format. Teams change a lot in a year's time, plus the momentum into CCL after the V-Cup is lost. They now have the FFA Cup.
Not true. They get to play in the 2014 Canadian Championship with a spot in the 2014 CCL on the line. They are excluded from the 2015 CCL because only MLS teams will be eligible for Canada's spot. They get to play in the 2015 Canadian Championship with a spot in the 2016 CCL on the line. So the only thing this means for certain for the NASL teams is that they can't get into the 2015 CCL. They still get to play in all editions of the Canadian Championship and all editions of the Canadian Championship will still lead to the CCL. (It also opens the door to the CSA expanding the tournament in the future. Thus is could mean NASL teams would get to play, say, PDL teams in early rounds of the Canadian Championship in some future tournament. This is hypothetical, however.)