Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW
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Categories: Capital Read, Inkless Wells

Rights and Democracy: Tickety-boo, Ladies and Gents! Tickety Freaking Boo!

by Paul Wells on Thursday, December 16, 2010 12:18pm - 20 Comments

From a news release, Oct. 18, 2010 [emphasis added for what I believe you will soon agree are essentially comedic purposes]:

Rights & Democracy overhauls its management team and announces new directions

MONTREAL – October 18, 2010 – Gérard Latulippe, President of Rights & Democracy, today announced that Stéphane Bourgon, Maxime Poulin and Martin Fortier are joining the organization’s management team: Mr. Bourgon as Senior Director, Communications, Government Affairs and Strategic Planning… These new members of the management team assume their duties today. “There is no doubt that these three new directors will breathe new life into our organization, with their extensive experience and skills in several different areas,” said Mr. Latulippe. …

“I am counting on the people whose appointments I am announcing today and on the vast experience each one has developed throughout his career to implement our new guidelines and strategic choices and to oversee our recovery. I’m also convinced that all of our dedicated staff and professionals will give this new team their full cooperation,” added Mr. Latulippe…

Stéphane Bourgon, Ad.E, CD, B.Adm, LL.B, LL.M, completed a Master’s Degree in International Law at the Université de Montréal, a Bachelor of Law at Université Laval and a Bachelor of Business Administration at the Royal Military College Saint-Jean/Université de Sherbrooke. Formerly a logistics officer and legal advisor with the Canadian Forces, Mr. Bourgon began his legal career with the office of the Judge-Advocate General, where he was responsible for coordination and training senior officers in international humanitarian law.

Mr. Bourgon went on to serve as advisor in international law to the office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague and chef de cabinet for the office of the President-Chief Justice. He was then asked by the clerk of the Tribunal to represent accused persons unable to pay their legal costs. In the two years leading up to his appointment at Rights & Democracy, Mr. Bourgon also practiced law in Rwanda and the Central African Republic. A recognized specialist in international humanitarian and criminal law, he has also taught at the Université du Québec à Montréal and at the Académie des droits de l’homme et du droit humanitaire in Geneva. He has taken part in numerous conferences as an expert and published many specialized articles. In 2009, he was awarded the title of avocat émérite by the Quebec Bar.

I contest none of this description. I’m just wondering why yesterday, as Rights and Democracy threatened to come teetering back into the news, I began receiving emails on today’s testimony from Sebastien Théberge.

“Hey Paul,” the first one began, “I’ll be your man on this one.”

The familiar tone is reasonable. Like most reporters who’ve been here longer than five years, I know Seb Théberge, who used to work for Liberal foreign minister Pierre Pettigrew. He was part of the large, competent and friendly media operation for the Vancouver Olympics and has apparently fetched up at a large Montreal PR firm. And he has become, at a minimum, the fourth person doing communications for Rights and Democracy this year, and the second outside hire.

The first was Charles Vallerand, a long-time R&D staff member whom the current regime fired; with his colleagues he is suing the organization. The second was Peter Stockland, who ran (runs?) Prima Communications, which R&D contracted without tender at considerable cost to the taxpayer and which put out one news release before merging his little think tank thingie with a little think tank thingie run by Michael van Pelt, a member of the R&D board.

Stockland’s little think tang thingie, I read here, “historically brought together the best intellectual minds to generate ideas that have consequences. The result is a set of arguments with gravitas and intellectual capital used successfully with the Supreme Court, in Parliament and by countless cultural influencers and commentators.” What Stockland’s communications shop apparently wasn’t great at was communicating for Rights and Democracy, because a few months after the merger between his think shop and van Pelt’s, Latulippe hired the much-credentialled Stéphane Bourgon, supra.

Bourgon’s first day of work was eight weeks ago. His employers are already calling in reinforcements. I have asked Théberge whether his contract was won through a competitive tender process and whether it was for an amount that normally requires a competitive tender. I’ll pass along any answers. In the meantime, here’s the latest email from Théberge:

“Mr. Latulippe will not comment the content of the [Deloitte audit] report or the content of the discussions in camera before the hearing as it would be inappropriate to do so.

“However, Mr. Latulippe will recommend to the Committee that a redacted version of the report be made public in the days following the hearing.”

Tags: Polish up your resumés, Rights and Democracy, Sebastien Théberge, you too could be a comms professional

More by Paul Wells

madeyoulook

Bourgon’s first day of work was eight weeks ago. His employers are already calling in reinforcements.

Well, big ugly pigs need to rely on a variety of lipstick choices.
MostlyCivil

Well, you know how tough the (insert season) holidays can be on the staffing of an organization like this.
tobyornotoby

Hey we've discovered a new theorem:

In modern organizations, transparency is inversely proportional to the amount of money spent on communications consultants.

Amateur Hour

I think the Blair Government in the UK discovered that one.

tedbetts

And the Harper Government perfected it.
tobyornotoby

So it won't get named after me?

Back to the lab!

bergkamp

" …. transparency is inversely proportional to the amount of money spent on communications consultants."

Exactly so. I was reading Wells' post and was thinking that if I was PM for a day – God help you all – one of the changes I would make would be to ban communications consultants and the like.

They are not communicating – or at least not in a way normal people understand the term – they are spinning, deceiving, hiding …. anything but telling the truth.

And I resent greatly my tax $$$ going to pay for people whose job is to lie to me to protect a Government I didn't vote for.

Holly Stick

Actually, Ralph Klein probably helped to pioneer the process with his Public Affairs bureau; and he was a PR man before going into politics. No doubt Harper learned from his example that you don't really have to govern well, you just have to lie over and over about how well you are governing.

And Harper's minions turned all the Government of Canada websites into ugly Conservative propaganda sites.

Lucky Luke

G&M has released the audit in full on their website.

madeyoulook

http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/01…

pdpd

Not to be difficult, and I'm sure that Bourgon is a brilliant guy, but he simply doesn't seem to have the expertise or experience to take on any one of a)communications, b)governmental affairs, or c)strategic planning, let alone all three. He's never spent a day doing any one of those jobs, at least per the press release where they trumpet his background.

This is all really, really weird. There are so many questions to ask. Why does R&D want him in that job? Why would they think of him in the first place in an administrative capacity, and not in a legal expertise capacity? There are literally a thousand underemployed PR/GR professionals in Ottawa or Montreal who are a better fit for this job.

Inkless

His long bio doesn't mention his Conservative electoral candidacies.

madeyoulook

Odd that they didn't include his most important qualification for the post.
pdpd

Wow, I guess it really is that simple sometimes.

It might be worth point out, though, but even that explanation is sort of an odd one. There are lots and lots of conservative PR professionals in Ottawa who could be trusted to play ball.

One of the stranger elements of this long story is that everybody in the R&D clique seems to be both spectacularly venal and spectacularly incompetent. I mean, they give their friends jobs, but then they give the wrong friends the wrong jobs (ie. it took them 3 tries to secure a competent mid-level communications professional, who are dime a dozen).

pdpd

Nuts – "worth pointing out," that is.

Guest

The audit is available on the globe and mail site: http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/01…
Truth Monger

So basically the moral is that if you email Paul Wells your correspondence will be posted on his blog ASAP.

Confidential sources take note.

http://www.translucid.ca/site/flacklife-the-translucid-blog/ bobledrew

Maybe, if you're a rep of the outside PR agency hired by an organization that has hired many PR agencies to supplement its own communications staff in support of an initiative to investigate supposedly reckless spending that actually turned out to not be reckless at all and has thrown a once-respected-and-respectable organization into disarray and disgrace. Take note.
Inkless

I'm very happy if paid spokesmen for public agencies operate on the assumption their correspondence with me will become public. If they don't assume that, they're idiots, and Seb Théberge is no idiot.

Peter Stockland

Someone sent me a link to this, Paul, so I'm just now getting the chance to tell you how disgusted I am with what you've become. You used to be a pretty good journalist but the blow it our your arse stuff you're doing with this blog would have barely made it at Frank magazine. Frank's Michael Bate, for example, overused the technique of asking someone a ridiculous question and then squeaking and squawking and haw-hawing when the person refused to answer. That was 20 years ago, Paul. That's how tired and shabby and shopworn what you're doing is now. And we know what happened to Frank magazine, don't we? It went out of business when its audience dwindled to a few hundred 37-year-old losers sitting around in their parents' basements waiting to drool. Poor old Frank didn't have Maclean's $1.5 million magazine fund subsidy from Canadian taxpayers to keep it going, which is why you should be very careful, Paul, about accusing people of costing taxpayers money. You, Paul, are a subsidized journalist. You get your snout in the trough every time tax-subsidized Maclean's pays you for doing your no-work drive-by blog. I'm willing to bet, Paul, that you're waggling your ears and squealing like a little porker for a whole lot more money that the minor amount I got paid to do a three-month, short-term contract for Rights and Democracy. You didn't know it was a short-term three month contract, did you Paul? You didn't know it was well under the amount required to go to tender, did you Paul? You didn't know because you didn't care enough to do even the minimal amount of journalism involved in picking up a phone and asking a question. And, really, why should you care when your Maclean's tax-subidized salary keeps rolling in, and all the left over Frank magazine losers in their mothers' basements are drooling on their chins waiting just for you?