Leonard Cohen virtually broke: report
TORONTO (CP) - Poet, singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen has discovered that his retirement savings, which he thought were worth more than $5 million US, have been depleted, Macleans magazine reports.
The famous troubadour, who has homes in Montreal and Los Angeles, is virtually broke, faces a whopping tax bill and has had to take out a mortgage to pay legal costs, the magazine reported in an exclusive cover story this week.
A forensic audit of his holdings found "massive improprieties."
"I was devastated," Cohen says of discovering last fall that his savings had been reduced to about $150,000. "You know, God gave me a strong inner core, so I wasn't shattered. But I was deeply concerned."
Cohen, 70, has raised questions about how his money was managed by a longtime trusted personal manager, who had signing authority on his accounts, and a financial adviser.
Cohen will release a new album soon with his current girlfriend, Anjani Thomas.
"This has propelled us into incessant work," he says of his financial troubles, adding: "It's one of the best albums I've heard."
Cdn. news lacking during CBC lockout
TORONTO (CP) - Two days into its controversial lockout of 5,500 unionized employees, the CBC has been operating on autopilot with plenty of reruns and pared-down programs.
But the most noticeable change has been the absence of any apparent effort to mount a management-produced television newscast, relying in prime time and over the supper hour on imported feeds of the BBC World News service. Newsworld has been limited to one-minute roundups of Canadian news read by managers before handing things off to the BBC.
"That's certainly the plan right now," Jason MacDonald, the CBC's official spokesman, said Tuesday of the news programming from the public broadcaster, although another publicist suggested it wasn't the network's original plan.
"The BBC as lockout-breaker. It's a very interesting model," said Ian Morrison, spokesman for the independent media watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.
Bob Hurst, president of CTV News, declined to speculate on the chances of the private network incurring a ratings windfall from the lack of domestic news by its public rival. But he was willing to deliver a plug for CTV's 11 p.m. news with Lloyd Robertson, noting that the live Atlantic version is available at 10 p.m. in Ontario and Quebec on CTV Newsnet.
"So there is an option for Canadians who don't want to stay up till 11," Hurst said. "Perhaps this is an opportunity for Canadians who have long been CBC traditionalists to find out that there is another very credible newscast, which is Canada's most-watched newscast."
Media observers said Tuesday they're stunned the CBC hasn't tried to provide any kind of news package from non-union staff or from all the incoming feeds that are available in any broadcast newsroom.
Patricia Bell, head of the school of journalism at the University of Regina, said the situation is even worse for radio, especially in places like Saskatchewan, where there are few alternatives to CBC Radio. She adds that managers have been shipped to Toronto to keep the central operation going.
"Who are they going to send (to cover news)?" Bell asks. "I just don't think they planned."
Bell noted that David Kyle, one of her school's graduates and a Regina-based CBC manager, was reading national radio news from Toronto on Monday night.
And because the current lockout, unlike labour disruptions in the past, involves one union that now comprises both journalists and technicians, Bell said the situation confirms who really brings programming to air.
"We have graduates from here who have been working, especially in radio, for four, five years, doing very solid work and they're still not even on contract. They're casual. And you don't build a strong ongoing presence if you don't nurture people and let them grow."
Normally a strong booster of the CBC, Morrison said he finds fault with both sides. He said both union and management went to the industrial relations board a couple of years ago and supported amalgamation of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (technicians) and Canadian Media Guild (journalists) into a single bargaining unit, a move that has resulted in the significant impact the current lockout has generated.
After 15 months of negotiations, the CBC locked out the bulk of its unionized employees at 12:01 a.m. Monday. At issue is the broadcaster's wish for more flexibility to hire contract and part-time employees, something the CMG says is a danger to job security for full-time staff.
In other lockout developments Tuesday:
-Security officials at the Ontario legislature have changed the locks on the doors of the CBC media offices there at the request of CBC management. Reporters have not been in their Queen's Park offices all week anyway but are now officially locked out.
-NDP leader Jack Layton is urging Heritage Minister Liza Frulla to protect Canadian programming by ending years of neglect of the public broadcaster. The New Democrats say the current lockout is the direct result of a lack of commitment from the Liberal government to protect and promote public broadcasting.
-In an open letter to the CBC president, Ontario NDP Leader Howard Hampton expressed his disappointment with what he says was a short-sighted decision to go the lockout route. And he said that for the duration of the dispute, Ontario New Democrats would boycott all CBC requests for interviews or information.
-In the Far North, in Iqaluit, programming in Inuktitut went off the air, leaving listeners needing vital weather information in a vacuum. But a CBC spokesperson says as of Tuesday afternoon, an Inuktitut announcer was back on the air.
-CBC management paid for a second full-page newspaper ad outling their position. It again expresses regret that the lockout became a necessity to break the deadlock with the union. It says only five per cent of CBC employees are on contract, including some of its most respected on-air personalities, and that they are represented by the CMG and are well compensated.
-A prolonged dispute could be particularly damaging to CBC Radio. In recent years, the radio networks have enjoyed a new ratings high, according to recent results compiled by the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement. In the Toronto market, Metro Morning, for example, has sustained a two point jump in market share to 12.6 per cent with an audience increase of 22 per cent.
Madonna Suffers Broken Bones in Accident
NEW YORK - Madonna's 47th birthday celebration was marred when she suffered several broken bones in a horse riding accident at her country home outside London, her publicist told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The superstar was hospitalized with three cracked ribs, a broken collarbone and a broken hand, according to Liz Rosenberg, her spokeswoman based in New York.
The accident occurred Tuesday at Ashcombe house, her estate outside of London.
Madonna and an assistant were riding horses, when Madonna, on a new horse she wasn't accustomed to riding, took a tumble. Her children, Rocco and Lourdes, were at the home but were not with their mother at the time, Rosenberg said.
"The whole family was out in the country, celebrating her birthday," Rosenberg said.
Her husband, director Guy Ritchie, took Madonna to an undisclosed hospital, where she was treated. Rosenberg said the entertainer was expected to be released later in the evening.
CBC workers locked out
TORONTO (CP) - Documentaries, world news from Britain and reruns of Antiques Roadshow dominated the CBC airwaves Monday as locked-out workers took to the picket lines in what was billed as the largest labour dispute in the national public broadcaster's history.
Shortly after midnight Sunday night, some 5,500 workers across the country, members of the Canadian Media Guild, found themselves locked out of their offices in a dispute over the network's desire to hire more contract workers.
Viewers who switched on the CBC's main network, Newsworld or CBC Radio were greeted by documentaries, reruns and BBC World News broadcasts, separated by brief newscasts that were delivered by decidedly unfamiliar voices and faces.
Football fans won't be pleased to hear they will likely see a pared-down broadcast of a CFL game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Edmonton Eskimos on Saturday night.
"I don't know exactly what it's going to look like yet," said Chris McCracken, the CFL's director of broadcasting. "But at this point we're yet to be satisfied by the CBC and their plan to ensure our broadcast is not compromised in any way."
He said the game may be aired without play-by-play or colour commentary - which would be a CFL first.
Dozens of CBC workers marched outside the iconic Canadian Broadcasting Centre in downtown Toronto, many sporting signs that read Locked Out.
"There's no reason we're out on the street today," said Arnold Amber, president of the CBC arm of the guild, which now represents between 80 and 90 per cent of the broadcaster's workers after technical staff opted to join the union in 2004.
CBC Radio host Anna Maria Tremonti called it "heartbreaking" to be kept off Canada's airwaves as she paced the sidewalk beneath the corporation's distinctive logo. Others fretted about how to pay their bills amid speculation the lockout could be a long one.
Christian Bailey, an associate producer with the CBC, said the worst part for him and many others was really just not getting to do a job they love.
"I think a lot of people are bewildered," Bailey said. "They just want to be working."
Local radio morning shows were replaced by a single national broadcast, while TV newscasts were dramatically pared down. Workers with the broadcaster's French-language operations, Radio-Canada and Radio-Canada International, were also locked out, except in Quebec and Moncton, N.B., where staff belong to a different union.
That gave a decidedly Quebecois flavour to much of the CBC programming in other parts of the country throughout the day.
Some of the CBC's most prominent personalities are members of the guild and remained locked out of their offices Monday, including Peter Mansbridge, anchor of the broadcaster's flagship national newscast, The National.
The main issue at stake is job security; the broadcaster wants more freedom to designate new employees as either permanent employees, contract workers with set starting and ending dates, or temporary workers, who are called in to fill openings as needed.
Arthur Lewis, executive director of the lobby group Our Public Airwaves, placed blame for the dispute squarely at the feet of the federal government.
"The insistence by CBC on the need to be able to hire more temporary workers can be traced directly to the corporation's serious funding shortfall," Lewis said in a statement.
"This lockout is a direct result of the underfunding of CBC by the federal government - creating a situation where CBC managers feel forced to take desperate but, in our view, short-sighted measures to try to best utilize limited resources."
The corporation currently consists of 70 per cent permanent workers, 20 per cent temporary workers and five per cent contractors.
The dispute centres on what kind of changes would be made to that formula, one Amber said is fairly standard in the broadcasting industry.
Richard Stursberg, executive vice-president of CBC Television, said management wants the ability to classify employees based on the needs of the corporation at any given point. In many cases, contract employees are hired strictly for a specific program, event or project, and the CBC wants those contracts to better reflect the project's schedule, he said.
"I think it's very healthy for an organization to be able to bring some people, small numbers, into an organization with their ideas and whatnot, and have them leave and bring in new people," said Jane Chalmers, vice-president of CBC Radio.
"I don't think it's uncommon in work life in Canada, in the broadcast industry or out."
Workers aren't opposed to contract work, but merely want some criteria put in place to ensure that they are used only under specific circumstances, Amber said.
Management's assurances that no one who currently holds a permanent job will end up as a contractor doesn't help when young employees are always asking the union to help them find permanent positions, he added.
"We are talking about the next generation of the CBC," Amber said. "We are a family, and the family goes from generation to generation."
Much of the dispute is rooted in long-standing questions about whether the government-funded CBC should operate like a private business, one that can make - and lose - money.
Amber said the CBC is a special institution in Canada because it's a Crown corporation.
"This is not a fast-food restaurant," he said. "The CBC is not a cable company, it isn't speciality programming - it's the national broadcaster."
CBC producers, newsroom staff and technicians have been without a contract for more than a year. Last month, guild members voted 87.3 per cent in favour of a strike mandate.
Amber said the Canadian public is in for a shock for the duration of the lockout, which marks the first time a labour dispute has left enough people off the job to dramatically impact the broadcaster's public face.
"Up until today, nobody knew what it meant to miss the CBC," he said.