QUICK TAKES - July 8, 2009

Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb, the former Broadway producers of hits such as “Ragtime,” have proposed going on a Canadian lecture tour as part of their sentence for defrauding investors of millions of dollars, a plan rejected by a prosecutor as “a drastic departure” from the norm.

Drabinsky would teach theater students “discipline in the craft,” talk about honesty and “avoidance of unethical conduct” in visits to 65 schools across the country, as part of a sentence in which he would avoid jail, his lawyer Edward Greenspan told a judge at a sentencing hearing in Toronto on Tuesday. Gottlieb proposed discussing business ethics at six universities.

Ontario Superior Court Judge Mary Lou Benotto might sentence the two men on Aug. 5, the next time they’re scheduled to return to court.