The first witness in the Ghomeshi trial, Linda Christina Redgrave, said she asked the Crown to appeal the case. After CANADALAND reported on a “factual vacuum” in the ruling yesterday, some legal experts believe there may be grounds for the appeal.
The first witness in the Jian Ghomeshi trial repeatedly said she was assaulted in a yellow Volkswagen. Linda Christina Redgrave, as we now know her, described the car as a “Love Bug,” a “Disney car,” and a “Beetle.”
Yesterday’s federal budget included investing $675 million over five years into the CBC. The broadcaster will receive the first, $75-million round of funding this year and $150 million every year following. An internal memo obtained by CANADALAND sheds some light on how the CBC plans to spend the new dollars. Notable journalistic commitments are investing into digital bureous across the country and bettering international coverage with “pocket bureaus.”
Here’s the full memo:
All staff Senior management message Finance Strategy 2020
You have of course seen by now that as part of Budget 2016, the Government of Canada has announced an important reinvestment in Canada’s public broadcaster; an additional $75M this year and $150M for the following four years.
This reinvestment is a tremendous vote of confidence by government and by Canadians in our programs and our services; in the work you, our CBCers and Radio-Canadiens, do every day. You are the ones who are ensuring that public broadcasting thrives in the digital age.
I know it hasn’t been easy. Every broadcaster has been grappling with this digital shift, but because of your efforts, we are making tremendous progress. Your resilience and commitment is paying off. You are creating a closer connection with Canadians, on every platform, on every device they own. One example: the number of people using our digital services each month has grown by three million in the past year alone.
Now, we have the multiyear funding commitment we have been asking for. This stability means we can continue our digital transformation and invest in the programs and services important to Canadians. We can build for the future.
For the past several months, we have been looking at our most important priorities should additional funding become available. Our senior executive team and I would like to share more details of our plans with you in the coming weeks. Until then, here’s an overview of where we’re going.
As you know, our goal is that even more Canadians value the programs we offer, and use our services more often throughout their day. To do that, we will continue to develop new content and new ways to share that content with them. We will strengthen our transformation to the digital environment. We will reinvest in key areas, like creating more original programs so we can reduce the number of repeats on our schedules. We’ll also do more to support what we call signature events; important events which bring Canadians together. The upcoming 150th anniversary of Confederation is a good example. We will build on our award-winning aboriginal programming, and we will invest in new projects and experiments like the ones coming from the excellent Idea Accelerator/Accélérateur d’idées.
We will look to strengthen our regional coverage, including creating a digital presence in select local markets with no current CBC/Radio-Canada service, so that Canadians can be better-informed about what’s going on in their communities. We would like to enhance our international coverage in news including scalable “pocket bureaus”, and we will ensure we can get our journalists in hot spots faster and for longer. This will improve our ability to provide a Canadian perspective on world events.
We will keep our focus on the future. We can’t reset the clock back to 2012. Additional resources do not change the fact that we must continue to partner with independent producers; to make sure you can work in a modern environment that helps you to do your best; to be smarter in the way we operate so that we can invest more in the content Canadians expect from us. And there will be new jobs for people who can help us create that new content.
We will be at the heart of some important events this year. This summer we will share with Canadians the joy of seeing their athletes compete with the best of the world at the Olympics in Rio. In September, CBC/Radio-Canada will host public broadcasters from around the world in Montreal for this year’s Public Broadcasters International conference. This will be a good opportunity for them to learn more about our digital transformation. And most of you are already working on great programing ideas to help Canadians celebrate the 150th anniversary next year.
Better days ahead!
Hubert
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editor@canadalandshow.com
After appearing on CANADALAND to speak about being denied access to the Ontario legislature, reporter Allison Smith was once again not allowed to watch Question Period — until she tweeted about being barred from the legislature.
Earlier today we were forwarded an email sent by Ottawa mayor Jim Watson to Andrew Cohen, a columist at the Ottawa Citizen.
At issue here was a threatening voicemail Cohen left for councillor Tim Tierney over project Bookmark The Core, which is an effort to get a new central library in the city. Cohen has since apologized in an addendum to his column.
In this testy voicemail Cohen warns the city councilor to “walk this back” or “you will hear from lots of us.” Cohen also said he is a member of Bookmark the Core in the voicemail, but on Evan Solomon’s show and in the addendum he said he’s not a member.
@CANADALAND here is the link to Tierney’s meltdown on CFRA for which he was rightly called out on: https://t.co/RsE3vrCAMn
— Michael Spratt (@mspratt) February 19, 2016
Here’s the email mayor Watson sent, complete with the voicemail:
From: Watson, Jim (Mayor/Maire)
Sent: Friday, February 19, 2016 11:44 AM
To: [email address redacted]
Cc: ‘Potter, Andrew (ott)’
Subject: Disclosing your conflict(s) of interest
Dear Mr. Cohen,
I am writing to share with you some of my concerns related to recent actions you have taken in your capacity as a Postmedia columnist.
On February 10, you left what I believe to be a threatening voicemail (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3553832/Cohen-Voicemail.m4a) for my colleague Councillor Tim Tierney. During this voicemail, which is now in the public domain, you state emphatically that you are a member of Bookmark the Core. You go on to demand that Councillor Tierney take certain actions “or you will hear from lots of us”.
On February 17, you published a column in which you endorse and defend positions taken by Bookmark the Core, but you fail to disclose your membership in the group. The same day, you participated in a talk radio interview (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3553832/Cohen-Interview.mp3), during which you state that you are not a member of that group.
One of those two statements, uttered a few days apart, is not truthful.
In your haste to personally attack the capable and dedicated leaders of this project, you lost sight of your professional duty to disclose your conflict of interest to your editor and more importantly – your readers.
Please note that my office has raised this conflict with your editor. When a columnist uses their professional voice to express their political views as an advocate without disclosing their affiliation, it is considered by many in the journalism industry to be unprofessional. We have asked the Ottawa Citizen to consider retroactively providing to its readers a disclaimer that your opinion piece should not have been published without a disclosure of your conflict of interest. In fact, given your stated association with the group referenced in your voicemail message, your column should have appeared as a “letter to the editor” and not as an opinion piece.
I hope you will, in the future, self-disclose your support of or involvement with any group, just like you should have done with Bookmark the Core. Failing to do so violates a fundamental rule of journalism – which is to proactively declare, up front, any conflicts – real or perceived – which a writer may have in relation to an issue.
Further, in the talk radio interview, you claimed that I have been “dragged kicking and screaming” into supporting a new main library branch. On the contrary, I was proud to make a new facility a key campaign commitment during the 2014 municipal election. I am also proud that our Council has supported the creation of a new main library as a priority for this term of Council.
Mr. Cohen, while I appreciate your enthusiasm for this project, your baseless and shallow attacks on the qualifications of capable leaders like Councillor Tierney and Danielle McDonald do nothing to make progress on this important city-building project. We will break ground on this facility in the next few years, and when we do so it will be because of the hard work and contributions of those with constructive and professional ideas. Regardless if you are an activist or a columnist, I hope you will bring a more positive viewpoint to this discussion.
Sincerely,
Jim Watson
Mayor
City of Ottawa
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story said the Ottawa Mayor’s chief of staff leaked us the above memo. He did not. It was sent to us by an invalid email address posing as City of Ottawa. However, we confirmed the memo itself is accurate and was sent by mayor Watson to all city councilors. We regret the error.
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editor@canadalandshow.com
The conditions of Jian Ghomeshi’s bail were changed to allow him to leave the country and move out of his mom’s house, according to documents obtained by CANADALAND. The former host was seen in Washington, DC on November 6, 2015 after the changes to the bail.
