Kenney vs. Amnesty: And introducing a very special Amnesty critic

By Paul Wells - Friday, August 19, 2011 at 1:57 PM - 18 Comments

Whenever Jason Kenney picks a fight with an organization, it is helpful to ask, among several other questions, this one: “Hey, has the organization in question recently found itself on the wrong side of Israel’s most vocal defenders?” And indeed, in the case of Amnesty International, the answer is yes.

Meet Gerald Steinberg. Longtime readers of this blog will be familiar with him. Steinberg is a professor of political studies at Bar Ilan University and president of NGO monitor, an organization devoted to rebutting international human-rights NGOs when they criticize the Israeli government. When the Harper government decided to stack the Rights and Democracy board with people who would brook no critique of Israel’s security operations in Gaza and the West Bank, Steinberg was an early supporter and, former insiders say, he closely co-operated with the new Rights and Democracy board chairman, Aurel Braun.

Steinberg, it turns out, has been an active and forceful critic of Amnesty International for the positions it’s take in the Middle East. Here’s a blog post and video from a debate he had with an Amnesty official in the U.S. And here’s an op-ed he co-wrote only six weeks before Jason Kenney wrote his letter to Amnesty.

Now, as I spent the entire year of 2010 writing in dozens of instalments, I thought the government’s handling of Rights and Democracy was despicable. But I don’t think its handling of the Section 35 fugitives, and Jason Kenney’s response to Amnesty’s critique of the Section 35 file, is invalidated just because Kenney’s letter often seems to echo Steinberg’s op-ed. But since I’ve spent the day giving context and background, here’s some more.

Jason Kenney strikes back

By Paul Wells - Friday, August 19, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 73 Comments

Reuters/Chris Wattie

Some stories are so odd nobody knows how to handle them. I don’t know how else to explain why Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s extraordinary public feud with Amnesty International has attracted so little coverage.

Here’s a senior Conservative minister departing from the Conservatives’ normal bland talking points and unleashing a written broadside against a critic. And Kenney’s sparring partner wasn’t a predictable target. It was the Canadian branch of Amnesty, one of the most revered human rights organizations in the world. But that didn’t stop the minister from calling Amnesty’s concerns “poppycock,” “sloppy and irresponsible” and “self-congratulatory moral preening.”

Here’s what the fuss was about: last month, Kenney and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews released the names and photos of 30 fugitives who’d evaded immigration authorities since being found inadmissible because they’re believed to be complicit in genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. In short, the ministers were asking the public to help track down fleeing war crimes suspects. The public has stepped up: since the ministers’ announcements, six of the 30 men have been apprehended and three of those six deported.
Continue…

Who the Tories stand with on human rights

By Paul Wells - Friday, February 4, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 30 Comments

AMR Nabil/AP

From 2005 to 2008, Rights and Democracy, the Montreal-based arm’s-length agency created by an act of Parliament in 1988, counted a man named Saad Eddin Ibrahim among its board members. Today we will compare Ibrahim to his successors to measure how completely Rights and Democracy, and with it the human-rights credibility of Stephen Harper’s government, have collapsed.

For most of his career Ibrahim was a sociologist at the American University in Cairo. A long-time critic of Anwar Sadat, he paused to praise Sadat for his peace with Israel. He became, in Christopher Hitchens’s words, “the best of the Egyptian ‘civil society’ dissidents by taking Hosni Mubarak’s sham elections at face value.

Sometimes he ran as a candidate. Other times he polled public opinion or instructed Egyptians in the legal exercise of their voting rights. For his troubles, Ibrahim spent three years in Mubarak’s jails, winning every appeal until George W. Bush secured his release. He has lived in the United States since then.

Last year in the Washington Post, Ibrahim criticized Barack Obama as an inadequate steward of Bush’s pro-democracy record in the Arab world. “Reform activists in Lebanon, Egypt, Kuwait and elsewhere felt empowered to press for greater freedoms during the Bush years. Unfortunately, Bush’s strong support for democracy contrasts sharply with President Obama’s retreat on this critical issue.” On substance, Ibrahim would fit right in with our government’s foreign policy.

But conservatism does not seem to be the quality Harper is looking for. What he is looking for is chaos. So in 2008, the year Ibrahim could have been reappointed to the Rights and Democracy board, the Harper government appointed several others including Elliot Tepper and Jacques Gauthier.

Last week, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon wrote to the opposition parties telling them he intends to reappoint Gauthier and Tepper for another three-year term. Let’s see what it takes to become a two-term Harper government appointee.

Continue…

Promoting democracy: Maybe later

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 30, 2010 at 1:12 PM - 21 Comments

In the Globe, a former staffer at Rights and Democracy and a former staffer at the Forum of Federations note the state of Canadian democracy promotion:

The Canadian International Development Agency’s Office of Democratic Governance, which channelled much of Canada’s democracy funding, was disbanded. The Department of Foreign Affairs’ Democracy Unit was folded into the Francophonie and Commonwealth division.

The Democracy Council, a forum for discussion and collaboration among Canadian democracy promotion agencies, disappeared despite interest from both government and non-government actors to see it expand.

The Parliamentary Centre’s Sudan and Haiti programs were “de-prioritized.” And our former organizations, Rights & Democracy and the Forum of Federations, have been rendered impotent by partisan and ideological board appointments and de-funding respectively.

And what of the new agency that was to make Canada a world leader in democracy promotion? Some say it was the victim of the disaster imposed on Rights & Democracy by its board; others cite the focus on austerity sweeping Ottawa. Either way, it has been put on the “back burner”. Continue…

Rights and Democracy: "We have been denied an important opportunity to shed light"

By Paul Wells - Friday, December 17, 2010 at 3:56 PM - 80 Comments

A news release from Gérard Latulippe, the president of Rights and Democracy, reacting to yesterday’s events:

Rights and Democracy: Rest in peace, Rémy Beauregard

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 5:31 PM - 155 Comments

Eight months ago I began calling for the public release of the Deloitte audit of Rights and Democracy. That was about five weeks after the R&D board announced the forensic audit into the agency’s financial transactions between 2005 and 2009, vaguely alleging financial improprieties under an earlier regime.

The terms of the audit were transparently tailored to make the deceased former president Rémy Beauregard look bad and to whitewash the current board and management of the organization. The audit period stretched from 2005 to 2009, so it would capture mismanagement that had been caught and fixed before Beauregard ever joined the agency in mid-2008. The audit period also ended before Aurel Braun, the current board majority and their appointees consolidated their control of the organization, so it would have nothing to say about the astonishing gusher of taxpayer cash which Braun, Jacques Gauthier, Elliot Tepper, Marco Navarro-Génie and others have uncorked at your expense and mine as they pursue their assorted theories and fascinations.

But Deloitte is a professional organization unlikely to tailor its findings to fit those theories and fascinations, so its audit eventually became the public’s best bet for testing the validity of the Braun claque’s claims. It has been obvious to me for many months that this best explained R&D’s reluctance to release the audit.

Today the audit was released — not through a formal process, but because somebody leaked it to the Globe‘s Daniel Leblanc. You can read it here. (Well, the main narrative of the audit, anyway. Thousands of pages of annexes, including lengthy email correspondences, time sheets and so on, remain unreleased.)

It shows what Beauregard’s defenders have long asserted: that the agency was run without scandal, and without unusually lax management, even before his arrival; that he was taking clear steps to improve its management; and that specific claims against him and his staff from Gauthier and others hold no water. In short, that Rémy Beauregard died while fighting back against an unfounded witch hunt perpetrated by scoundrels who today stand unmasked and humiliated. The government of Canada under Stephen Harper and his minister Lawrence Cannon today continues to support those scoundrels, to its shame and ours as citizens. Continue…

Rights and Democracy: Scooped!

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 12:58 PM - 69 Comments

Daniel Leblanc at the Globe and Mail has posted the entire Deloitte audit of Rights and Democracy on the newspaper’s website, “in the spirit of transparency.” Off I go to read it now. You can too. Let’s check back in with one another later, shall we?

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

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 12:18 PM - 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. Continue…

Rights and Democracy: an odd cameo appearance

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 2, 2010 at 4:11 PM - 47 Comments

Remember the great old days when the entire cast of Homicide: Life on the Streets would suddenly appear, in character, in an episode of Law and Order? Geek heaven. That’s how I felt last week when I saw a fascinating bit of testimony from the much-noted Nov. 23 meeting of the Commons Government Operations committee.

That was the meeting at which construction-company boss Paul Sauvé testified that he received a $9 million contract to renovate Parliament’s West Block after he paid $140,000 to Gilles Varin, who knew people in the Conservative party. Here’s the key bit from a PostMedia account of that testimony:

“Varin was suggested to us strongly as a man who had strong connections with the Conservative government and that was the go-to-guy for this type of small-cap infrastructure spending contracts,” Sauve told the government operations and estimates committee in the House of Commons. “So yes, because we paid, we received.”

He goes on to suggest all sorts of links between the construction business and organized crime in Quebec, which I know will come as profoundly saddening news to Maclean’s readers and/or Members of Parliament. But where it gets really interesting for followers of the endless Rights and Democracy saga is when Liberal MP Geoff Regan notices the passive voice in the quote above (“Varin was suggested to us strongly…”) and decides to tug at that thread:

Hon. Geoff Regan: Thank you.

Who told you that you should go to see Mr. Varin because he was the guy to see?

Mr. Paul Sauvé: We had a board member called Claude Sarrazin, who was a Conservative, I believe, at least in spirit, who requested us to contact Gilles Varin, and brought him to my attention, to my office. Continue…

Rights and Democracy: We have a date

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 26, 2010 at 3:22 PM - 75 Comments

The Commons Foreign Affairs Committee met in camera yesterday, and when the members emerged, this appeared in the minutes:

“It was agreed, — That the Committee ask Gérard Latulippe, President of Rights & Democracy, and the Chair of the Board of Directors, Aurel Braun, to appear before the Committee on Thursday, December 16, 2010; and that members of the Committee be provided with the forensic audit report from Samson Bélair-Deloitte & Touche and the investigative report prepared by Sirco, no later than Monday, December 13, 2010.”

That gives our friends a bit more than two weeks to cough up the reports.

The “Sirco” report refers to the report of a private investigator who was brought in to investigate the theft of computers from the Rights & Democracy offices , a theft which apparently took place on the day of Rémy Beauregard’s funeral. I’ve never found the assorted contradictory speculation about who might have done that theft very useful, and since there have been no arrests, one presumes the Sirco investigation was inconclusive. That report will not be without interest, however. The first time the staff of Rights and Democracy heard of the firm was after three staff members had been questioned by R&D board appointee Jacques Gauthier in the presence of Sirco principal Claude Sarrazin — whose business affiliation and role was not disclosed to the staffers when they were questioned. They were later fired and are suing for wrongful dismissal.

This is, by my count, at least the fourth time the committee has asked for the Deloitte audit (and, I believe, also the fourth time it has asked for the Sirco report, about which I have written less often). Now they have put a time limit on their request. We’ll see how the Rights and Democracy board responds.

Rights and Democracy: Well thank goodness we have a take-charge minister

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 at 8:21 AM - 61 Comments

The very last exchange in Tuesday’s Question Period. There are a lot of ways to read Minister Cannon’s remarks (and therefore a few different ways to read my title for this post) but for now I’ll just get it on the record and wait, with limited patience, to see what happens next:

Ms. Johanne Deschamps (Laurentides—Labelle, BQ): Mr. Speaker, the board of Rights & Democracy is accountable to Parliament for its management. As parliamentarians, we have the right to know what is going on in that organization. Yet the board of Rights & Democracy still has not released the Deloitte & Touche audit report. Talk about a lack of transparency.Will the Minister of Foreign Affairs continue to put up with such questionable conduct?

Hon. Lawrence Cannon (Minister of Foreign Affairs, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I will remind the House very briefly that this is an arm’s-length organization funded by the government. However, I see that instead of taking action, the opposition has decided to ask questions. At the first opportunity, my parliamentary assistant will ask the board of Rights & Democracy to come and table the report. We will do the job the opposition does not want to do.

UPDATE: In the original French, Cannon referred to his “adjoint parlementaire” as the person who’ll be doing the asking on his behalf. In Quebec’s National Assembly, where he spent much of his career, “adjoint parlementaire” means parliamentary secretary, an MP and caucus colleague assigned to assist a minister. (In Ottawa the term is secretaire parlementaire.) Cannon seemed to be referring to Deepak Obhrai, his new parliamentary secretary. I’ll follow up with the minister’s staff. -pw

Rights and Democracy: So everyone agrees! And there's no problem! Right?

By Paul Wells - Monday, November 22, 2010 at 12:32 PM - 81 Comments

Over at the CBC, our their Kady O’Malley points out that Parliamentary privilege being what it is — powerful — “none” of the exemptions claimed by the industrious board of Rights and Democracy “are remotely relevant” to the Foreign Affairs Committee’s request for the Deloitte forensic audit.

You know what’s kind of cool? What’s kind of cool is that, nearly a year into my coverage of the mess at R&D, there are thousands of people in this country who actually understand what I’m talking about in the first paragraph above. For those who need a refresher, start with my next-most-recent post and then start at the beginning by clicking the “Rights and Democracy” tag at the bottom of this post.

Anyway. What this means is (a) the committee has asked for the audit; (b) the R&D board has made an elaborate show of voting to release the audit to the committee — subject to a comically elaborate list of conditions — contractual confidentiality, solicitor-client privilege, privacy concerns, the Official Secrets Act — which are (c) perfectly irrelevant to any serious consideration of whether the audit can be released, for reasons Kady explains. Well, one item on the list would be relevant if it were germane: “Confidences of the Privy Council.” The problem is that the Deloitte audit is an investigation into the ordinary financial transactions of a quasi-NGO during a period, the years 2005 to 2009, when it was not the subject of any public controversy. There can be no Privy Council confidences in such transactions.

So the confidentiality emperor is, to mix up a metaphor, buck naked. Rights and Democracy must release the audit.

Now here’s the interesting thing. Nobody on earth claims to want to keep the audit from being released. Continue…

Rights and Democracy: The twilight struggle of transparency and accountability

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 19, 2010 at 2:43 PM - 78 Comments

On Nov. 4 I wrote to Stéphane Bourgon, the new communications director for Rights and Democracy, quoting his own words back to him. “In Le Devoir on Oct. 23,” I wrote, “you are quoted as saying, in regard to the Deloitte forensic audit of R&D: ‘The will of our president is to make the document public as rapidly as possible. As soon as the Foreign Affairs committee asks for it, we will send it to them.’” [I've since added the emphasis, for reasons that will soon become apparent.]

I told M. Bourgon his error lay in situating such a request in the future. The Foreign Affairs committee had already requested the document, and more than once. In this letter from R&D president Gérard Latulippe to the committee, dated May 27, Latulippe acknowledges the committee’s requests for the audit and for other documents and explains, in regard to the Deloitte audit, that it would be finalized “sometime in the month of June at which point it will be provided to the Committee.” [emphasis added, reasons soon to become apparent.]

So, taking phrases like “as soon” and “will” and “at which point” and “will” at face value, I asked Bourgon whether the audit had been delivered yet, and if not, why not. This was on Nov. 4. Continue…

“Democracy demands accountability and rights require responsibility”

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at 6:22 PM - 0 Comments

Those aren’t my words. But I endorse them completely and we are gathered here today to see that they are fulfilled at last.

They are the words attributed to Jacques Gauthier, who was the interim president of the Montreal agency Rights and Democracy when he announced it had engaged Samson Belair/ Deloitte & Touche to conduct a forensic audit of the organization’s financial transactions from 2005 to 2009. Jacques Gauthier is still a member of the R&D board, which is gathering in Montreal for a board meeting this Thursday, Oct. 21. The agency has the Deloitte report in hand and has had it since at least late August. This will be the week R&D makes the audit public.

Right?

That is, after all, what they promised eight months ago. Continue…

Inconsistency, like Canada's government, knows no borders

By Paul Wells - Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 4:25 PM - 0 Comments

Two developments that make a mockery of the Harper government’s hotly-defended positions on two emotional debates this year:

• Bev Oda’s blogging from Mozambique! She’s blogging about what makes good policy in some of the poorest parts of the world. She’s blogging about how to ensure the very finest in maternal and child health. She’s learned so much about how important it is to avoid unwanted pregnancies. She’s careful to share her discoveries with readers:

“…one realizes very quickly that, in addition to facilities and equipment, maternal, nutrition and, family planning education programs are also crucial.”

Say, what’s that part about family planning? Perhaps she was only talking about “family planning education,” although she does list that, whatever it means, along with “facilities and equipment.” It’s a bit vague. So Elizabeth Payne from the Ottawa Citizen gave the minister a call.

Oda said the governments of Mozambique and Mali are both highly supportive of family planning, including abortion in some cases, and they like working with Canada, because it is considered very flexible. “We are not seen as having stipulated certain paradigms … or having any particular direction. We say ‘How can we help? What is the most effective way?’”

Oda said the controversy around Canada’s G8 initiative and abortion was largely limited to Canada and is not an issue in either Mali or Mozambique.

Abortion is legal in both countries, when a woman’s life is considered to be at risk, which, effectively, means that most women don’t have access to abortion.

Still, Oda said Canada would support abortion infrastructure if asked. “As long as it is legal within the country and it’s a legal procedure … if we were asked to help in that way, we would do that.”

That last bit is helpful, because in April, after months of heated questioning across the Commons aisle, Oda was still trying to peddle a distinction between “family planning,” which the government would fund, and abortion, which it wouldn’t. But now that the Harper government’s constant cheerleaders are looking somewhere else, Oda has gone back to the Michael Ignatieff-approved maternal health initiative of 40 years’ standing, which includes abortion.

As the inimitable Chris Selley put it, “Attention social conservatives: You’ve been had. Again.” But of course, social conservatives like being had and, now that they’ve been informed they’ve been had, will get mad at the Citizen and probably Selley and me for pointing it out. Not at the prime minister of Canada for playing them like a cheap fiddle.

Onward. Continue…

Rights and Democracy: Time keeps on slippin’…

By Paul Wells - Monday, August 30, 2010 at 11:19 AM - 0 Comments

Last week I decided to check in on the Deloitte forensic audit of Rights and Democracy, which the agency’s interim president announced in February and expected to receive three weeks later. In May the new president expected to make it public in June. In July he said it wouldn’t be available before the end of the summer. (The electronic trail of all of this can be found by clicking on the “Rights and Democracy” tag at the bottom of this blog post.)

I wrote to the communications people for Rights and Democracy:

It has now been just over a month since I last inquired about the Deloitte audit of Rights and Democracy. I am writing today with some further inquiries, which I hope you’ll pass along to Mr. Latulippe or anyone who can answer them.

1. Has Deloitte delivered the audit?

2. If so, when was it delivered?

3. If it has been delivered, when will it be released to the public and/or the Commons committee on foreign affairs?

4. In the interest of transparency and accountability, please account for any delay between Rights and Democracy’s receipt of the audit and its release to parliamentarians and the public.

5. If Deloitte has not yet delivered the audit, do you know when it will?

Thanks once again for all your help.

Sincerely,

Paul Wells

This morning I received a reply from Gérard Latulippe directly. Here it is in its entirety: Continue…

Rights and Democracy: We now return to our regularly-scheduled delay

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 5:55 PM - 0 Comments

And now an update for followers of this blog’s relentless chronicling of the Deloitte audit at Rights and Democracy. (A considerable library of previous posts and print columns on the Montreal quasi-governmental agency can be found here.)

The first we heard of an outside audit at R&D was from a news release from the new board majority in February. That release promised the audit would take three weeks. Months later, in April, members of the board testified before the Commons foreign-affairs committee and couldn’t say when they would be able to produce the audit. In late May, Gérard Latulippe wrote to the committee and said the audit would be public sometime in June. (The odd thing is that the only people who now periodically demand the release of the audit are the critics of the same board majority who took it into their heads to commission the audit in the first place, and who, as of April, had spent more than $120,000 on it.)

Anyway. By half-past July I decided it was time to check in on the February audit that was due in March and had not been delivered in June. On July 13 I wrote to an R&D press officer:

My name is Paul Wells and I’m the Senior Columnist at Maclean’s magazine.

It’s now five months since M. Gauthier announced, on behalf of the R&D board, that the Deloitte audit would be released in three weeks. And it’s now mid-July; M. Latulippe told the Commons foreign-affairs committee, who like to receive reliable information, that the audit would be released “sometime in June.”

So, depending which account one trusted, the audit is now between two weeks and four months overdue.

Given the considerable public interest in this audit; the truly impressive sums of taxpayer money that had already been spent on it by April, with Heaven only knows how much more has been spent since then ; and M. Gauthier’s own words, when he announced the audit in February, that “Rights and Democrcy must be accountable for the way our funds are spent;” I have some specific questions which I would like you to pass along to M. Latulippe and/or the board, and reply with specific answers as soon as possible:

- when, precisely, will the Deloitte audit be made public?

- will it be released in its entirety, along with certification from Deloitte that no part of their work has been redacted?

- how can you explain the series of delays in this audit’s release?

- how much more money has been spent on this audit since April?

I look forward to an early reply. In the interest of transparency, I intend to publish this email to you, and any final reply from you or other representatives of Rights and Democracy, verbatim and in whole, either in Maclean’s or electronically on my weblog.

The R&D staffer wrote back immediately saying Gérard Latulippe, the organization’s new president, was traveling but would respond soon. And indeed today I received this reply from Latulippe, which you are welcome to discuss in the comments.

Dear Mr. Wells, Continue…

Rights and Democracy: Sheila Fraser acts to ensure financial transparency

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 3:58 PM - 24 Comments

A little bird told me that, while we all wait for the Deloitte audit of Rights and Democracy that the former board promised us in three weeks, four months ago, that someone else was poking around at the benighted organization: Auditor General Sheila Fraser. I called her office, and media relations manager Ghislain Desjardins confirmed it was so. His note to me, in its entirety:

We expect to submit our annual financial audit of Rights and Democracy financial statements by the end of June (22nd is the tentative date). Rights and Democracy publishes the financial audit in their Annual Report. Click here for 2008-2009 RD’s Annual Report (.pdf). Page 22 for Financial Statements. You should get in touch with Rights and Democracy to see if you can have access to their financial statements before they release them in their annual report. Continue…

Update on Rights and Democracy Access-to-Information Request

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 at 3:31 PM - 39 Comments

Last November, I made an access-to-information request to the Privy Council Office asking to see a performance evaluation report on the now deceased former president of Rights and Democracy, Remy Beauregard.

The PCO initially said no such report could be found in its records. Then, when David Matas, a Rights and Democracy board member, confirmed the report’s existence on national television and said it had been released to the PCO, Ann Wesch, director of access to information and privacy at the PCO, told me my request had not been “tasked out properly.”

That was in February. More delays followed, but this morning I received the PCO’s response:

“We have now completed the processing of your request and it has been determined that the information you requested may not be disclosed. The information has been withheld pursuant to subsection 19 (1) (personal information) of the Act.”

Rights and Democracy: the very textbook definition of cronyism

By Paul Wells - Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 4:33 PM - 51 Comments

Some behaviour is so asinine it takes a little while for the plain meaning of it to sink in. Which is why I am only now highlighting one paragraph of Rights and Democracy president Gerard Latulippe’s letter to the Commons Foreign Affairs committee.

The committee had asked Latulippe and his immediate predecessor, R&D board member and erstwhile interim president Jacques Gauthier, for details of various actions and expenditures. One thing they asked about was “Payments to Mr. Navarro-Génie (board member) while acting as an advisor to Mr. Gauthier including details of his assignment.”

Here’s Latulippe’s answer, two months after he received the request. “$2,925. I don’t have details of his assignment.”

To which the only possible reply, delivered through clenched teeth while trying to remain even a little calm, is why the hell not?

Marco Navarro-Génie is a board member of Rights and Democracy, which has held meetings since the Foreign Affairs Committee asked for details of his assignment. He is a signatory to repeated National Post op-eds along with Gauthier and board chairman Aurel Braun. He is an academic and occasional radio commentator in Calgary. He follows me on Twitter. He’s in the Okotoks telephone directory. He’s an easy guy to find.

He pocketed $2,925 in taxpayer money that was given to him by Jacques Gauthier while the two of them sat on the same board and were engaged on the same side of a highly public political dispute, in which both paraded, and continue to parade, as advocates of transparency and accountability. There is no conceivable explanation for a failure, by Navarro-Génie, Gauthier and Latulippe, to account in public for every dime of that money.

That explanation is long past due.

Rights and Democracy: "I don't have a contract for Ogilvy Renault and Woods LLP"

By Paul Wells - Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 3:35 PM - 23 Comments

Via ex-colleague Kady, the latest, but not the last, in the new Rights and Democracy regime’s long-running attempt to redefine modern political satire.

Two months after R&D board member Jacques Gauthier and newly-appointed president Gerard Latulippe promised to deliver to the Foreign Affairs committee all the contracts they’d entered into since they ushered in a New Era of Transparency and Accountability™, they’ve delivered the contracts. Well, those contracts that actually ever existed. The Ogilvy Renault and Woods LLP projects appear to have been handshake deals. Still, this is progress. The now-finally-available paperwork suggests the NETA™ has cost, so far, a little north of half a mil, but you’ll understand it’s worth it because the former regime once spent $30,000 on something Aurel Braun didn’t like. So cut them some slack, guys. Continue…

Rights and Democracy: Meet the new boss

By Paul Wells - Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 7:50 AM - 81 Comments

A few notes before the Foreign Affairs committee meets today to hear from Gérard Latulippe, the new president of Rights and Democracy appointed by the Braun/Gauthier faction of the board and rubber-stamped by the hapless salaryman who sits in the office normally reserved for foreign ministers, Lawrence Cannon.

Continue…

Rights and Democracy: Dept. of Office Memos

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 at 1:57 PM - 73 Comments

The document I’ve posted below after the jump was one of several that were tabled today at the Foreign Affairs Committee by three former members of Rights and Democracy. The three, Marie-France Cloutier, Razmik Panossian and Charles Vallerand, were fired weeks ago by bailiff’s letter on the order of interim president Jacques Gauthier, a member of the new Rights and Democracy board majority, on the day before the appointment of Gérard Latulippe as the agency’s president. The document lists several “incidents” between members of the Rights and Democracy staff and members of its board over the past 15 months. While this document has been tabled at the Foreign Affairs committee, none of the assertions in it has been proven. It should be considered only a list of allegations made by one aggrieved party in a continuing dispute. — pw Continue…

Rights and Democracy: Notes on the value of a man's signature

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 at 1:24 PM - 24 Comments

“We are looking to the future. We want the organization to get out of politics at home, and return to promotion of human rights and democratic development abroad. We call upon Parliament to hold public hearings so that facts can replace fantasies, and we can move ahead. Rights and Democracy should be nobody’s football.”

— Seven members of the Rights and Democracy board, including Marco Navarro-Génie, March 22, 2010

“So the combined opposition in Ottawa has forced Parliament to waste its time and taxpayer money holding hearings on Rights and Democracy. It will be a real gong show, a kangaroo court, to try and then convict good Canadian citizens whose only crime is to do their duty to look out for Canadian taxpayers. Get your tickets now, folks. The show opens Tuesday morning.”

— Rights and Democracy board member Marco-Navarro-Génie, eight days later

Both pieces, and I would say especially the second, are picturesque and will reward readers’ close attention.