What drove Canada’s media colossus, Canwest Global Media, into bankruptcy protection? An Australian TV network and a tax-avoidance ploy — or at least CEO Leonard Asper’s poor timing in dealing with those two, according to a major story in the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business Magazine today. Not selling Network Ten sooner, for more money, and turning its newspapers into a half-hearted “income trust” left Canwest saddled with too much debt during an economic downturn. Meanwhile, some Canadian media breathlessly reported yesterday that Canwest’s National Post might stop publishing, but it seems that was just a threat in a court filing as the Post’s ownership is shuffled back with the other Canwest newspapers. Court documents revealed that, contrary to what it claimed last year, the Post has lost money each of the 11 years it has existed, including $9 million last year. All the other Canwest papers are still profitable.