By Haroon Siddiqui, Toronto Star
Those who doubt the efficacy of Parliament should look at the work of House and Senate committees, which are especially effective during a minority government. In recent days, the foreign affairs committee controlled by the opposition, has helped expose the turmoil, unethical practices and possible financial wrongdoings at Rights and Democracy.
That's the Montreal-based agency that promotes the rule of law in the world's trouble spots. It was more famous abroad than at home — until its Stephen Harper-appointed directors made a mess of it in the months leading up to and since a hostile take over in January.
The new Conservative appointees hounded the agency president, Remy Beauregard, over three small grants he had given to one Israeli and two Palestinians NGOs to probe possible human rights violations during the Israeli attack on Gaza a year ago. He died of a heart attack caused by the harassment, said his wife, Suzanne Trepanier, who testified Tuesday.
The agency staff called for the resignation of the chair, Aurel Braun, a U of T professor, and two of his allies on the board. He responded by naming one of the three, Toronto lawyer Jacques Gauthier, as interim president.
Four pro-Beauregard directors were ousted or quit. One, Payam Akhavan, professor of international law at McGill University, testified Tuesday alongside Trepanier.
He explained that Harper's men (yes, they are all men) were obsessed with the grants to the Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups. "As a compromise, Beauregard agreed to provide no more funds to them." But Braun insisted on having a veto on all future grants. Again, Beauregard agreed.
Yet Braun and allies kept hurling "baseless accusations, half-truths and distortions" against Beauregard. They "attempted to portray him as anti-Israel on the very issues that had already been resolved to everybody's satisfaction."
Their desire "to exact revenge" and "persecute the staff" over the $30,000 grants ended up costing taxpayers about $500,000, as Braun and Co. hired lawyers, a security agency, a PR outfit and an auditing firm to justify/clean up the mess of their own making.
Ironically, Braun and Co. had rationalized their actions as an attempt to infuse efficiency, transparency and accountability. Yet, as NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar said, they "went on a spending binge to go after people ... That's no way to run an institute with transparency." Their no-bid contracts seemed "highly disturbing, unprofessional and unethical."
Two weeks ago, the agency got a new president, Gerard Latulippe. Testifying Thursday, he confirmed that Gauthier spent nearly $400,000 in his 66 days as interim president. And the meter was still ticking. So Akhavan's estimate may turn out to be low.
Not included in the tab was his other revelation that the budget for the board of directors had more than doubled, from $133,000 a year to $300,000 (including directors' honoraria, up from $40,000 to $80,000).
He raised questions over whether Gauthier and another board member, Marco Navarro-Genie, had overcharged honoraria — Gauthier charging five days of preparation time for meetings in China that were mostly "exchanges of pleasantries."
Worse, Gauthier gave Navarro-Genie a one-week agency contract, "self-evidently a conflict of interest for any board member to give a contract to another."
Latulippe himself is a controversial choice. A political chameleon (a Quebec separatist who ran federally for the Canadian Alliance under Stockwell Day), he favours the death penalty, opposes same-sex marriage and considers Canadian Muslims a terrorist threat. Those positions are hardly in keeping with the values of a human rights agency, as Amnesty International said. His appointment was also opposed by all three opposition parties.
In his testimony, Latulippe danced around his embarrassing past and seemed to deftly distance himself from Braun and Co., as he praised the staff they had trashed. He pleaded for time to make the agency work.
What began as a misguided mission by some over-zealous members of the board has turned into a full-blown scandal of abuse of power as well as taxpayers' money. It has tarnished not only the Harper government's image but also Canada's reputation in the world. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
