With programs in troubled countries around the world, Rights and Democracy prides itself on its ability to provide urgent human rights help. But one day in 2007, it was a different kind of rights emergency that confronted the federally funded agency.
An article had been published that morning in the National Post, detailing the spending and travel of the organization's globe-trotting president, Jean-Louis Roy; a senior manager, Marie-France Cloutier, suspected an employee of providing embarrassing information to the newspaper and immediately sought legal advice on how far she could go in rooting out the suspect. The employee in question could be guilty of "disloyalty, malice and bad faith" if he had leaked information, a lawyer advised in a memo recently obtained by the National Post. Rights and Democracy would be within its rights to pore over his work computer.
Three years later, it is Ms. Cloutier's computer that has come under scrutiny. In the upheaval following the death last January of Mr. Roy's successor, Remy Beauregard, Ms. Cloutier and two other Rights and Democracy managers were accused of disloyalty and fired. (They have filed suit alleging wrongful dismissal.) It was suggested that they had undermined Rights and Democracy's government-appointed board of directors and divulged internal information. Sirco Solutions, a Montreal firm specializing in data recovery, was hired at a cost of $91,000 to seek evidence of wrongdoing, and its investigation has been tied to the firings of Ms. Cloutier and the other two managers.
Events in the six months since Mr. Beauregard died suddenly of a heart attack have exposed a poisoned atmosphere within Rights and Democracy. Working at arm's-length from the federal government, Rights and Democracy has earned praise for its work in such trouble spots as Haiti, Afghanistan and the Congo. But within the walls of its Montreal headquarters, its principled defence of human rights is often overtaken by backstabbing and acrimony.
Some, including current board member David Matas, question whether the organization remains relevant 20 years after its founding. Rene Provost, a law professor at McGill University and director of its Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, said it is worth saving. "Rights and Democracy is an effective tool because over the last 20 years it has built a reputation as a legitimate and significant player," he said. "The crisis at Rights and Democracy is the kind of crisis that happens in any institution once in a while, and many institutions survive these crises and become better and stronger after corrective measures."
Aurel Braun, the chairman of the board of directors, said the current conflict is a necessary price for ensuring the organization's survival. A University of Toronto political science professor specializing in the former Eastern Bloc, he likens Rights and Democracy to an emerging democracy dealing with its dark past. "In successful transitions, it is very important to carefully and fairly examine the past, admit the mistakes that were made," he said. "Nobody is vindictive here.... We just need to be able to learn from the past to be better able to build a future."
At the time of his death, Mr. Beauregard had been fighting to have withdrawn from his file a performance appraisal he considered deeply unfair, which revolved around allegations he had allowed Rights and Democracy to cozy up to terrorists.
A memo written by board vice-chairman Jacques Gauthier alleged that Mr. Beauregard had met with representatives of Hamas and Hezbollah during a 2008 conference in Cairo. "This is patently false, and I consider it an attack on my reputation," Mr. Beauregard wrote in response.
In the leaked email exchanges that have followed Mr. Beauregard's death, and the organization's shakeup, much has focused on the Cairo meeting-- was it, as Mr. Gauthier maintained, of "obviously questionable" legality, or rather, as Mr. Beauregard characterized it, merely a passing connection with a member of Hezbollah's political wing.
Mr. Beauregard's widow, Suzanne Trepanier, said during her testimony before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs "categorizing Remy's speech for an audience of over 150 people, including government delegations, as a meeting with terrorists is absurd."
She has accused Mr. Braun and his allies of smearing her husband's reputation as they try to defend their own behaviour. Some board members, she said, "are not ashamed to continue levelling accusations against Remy when he is no longer there to defend himself."
In late 2006, a former employee who had recently quit Rights and Democracy began hearing odd reports from friends and family. A man named Don McCleery was nosing around asking questions about her. She discovered that Mr. McCleery was a former RCMP officer who worked as a private investigator. As a Mountie, he had been instrumental in locating kidnapped British diplomat James Cross during the 1970 October crisis, but was chased from the force in 1973 following his involvement in dirty-tricks operations targeting the FLQ.
The employee's departure from Rights and Democracy had been acrimonious, but she had never dreamed the organization would fly a Montreal private investigator out to B.C. to sniff around. She would later learn that the organization paid at least $6,000 plus expenses for the investigator's work.
Interviewed recently, Mr. McCleery said Ms. Cloutier, his contact at Rights and Democracy, was concerned about conflict of interest. "It was somebody in there trying to set up their own [organization] to compete with them while they were still employed there," he said. Rights and Democracy was so concerned about an ex-employee competing in the field of human rights protection that it hired a private investigator. It also began legal action, filing for an injunction demanding the return of documents related to a translation project.
A letter from her lawyer, containedinthecourt file, described it as "a raw attempt by a government agency to quell a potential voice of dissent," calling the hiring of Mr. McCleery "thug-like and abusive behavior."
Mr. McCleery would not be the only former police officer to be called upon by Rights and Democracy management. Among recently leaked documents is an email exchange, from June and July 2009, between Mr. Beauregard and Gaetan Duchesneau, Montreal's former police chief. The file of leaked emails calls him, "Beauregard's policeman."
Mr. Duchesneau, who said offered to help Mr. Beauregard, free of charge, with his run-ins with the board, resented the suggestion he had acted as a "policeman" for Mr. Beauregard. "I would be more than happy to testify to say that was not the purpose," Mr. Duchesneau said. "You need to be a scumbag to say a thing like that."
Not revealed in the emails, he said, is what he told Mr. Beauregard during their final conversation in late November. He advised him that fighting the board was a losing proposition and he should tell Mr. Braun: "You don't like me. I don't like you. Respect my contract and then I'm out of here." But Mr. Beauregard was not prepared to surrender.
"When he wouldn't listen to me I said, 'OK, you're not taking this piece of advice. I will give you a second piece of advice. Go to the funeral parlour and make your prearrangements, because that's where you're heading,' " Mr. Duchesneau recounted. "I could see from the first time I met him in June to late November that that was where it was heading ... I really felt sorry for him."
The words proved prophetic, and Rights and Democracy has been left in turmoil following Mr. Beauregard's death. A staff letter -- initially described as unanimous but later revealed to be lacking the support of two of 47 employees-- called on Mr. Braun, Mr. Gauthier and Elliot Tepper to resign from the board, accusing them of harassing Mr. Beauregard. Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon threw his support behind the board.
Mr. Provost, of McGill's Centre for Human Rights, said the current board of directors has mistakenly tried to align Rights and Democracy's programs with Conservative foreign policy.
His proposed remedy is drastic. "My sense is that the board of directors has lost its credibility," he said, recommending that it be entirely replaced. The organization needs to return to its nonpartisan roots, when a Progressive Conservative prime minister, Brian Mulroney, chose a New Democrat, Ed Broadbent, as president. The recently installed president, Mr. Latulippe, a former Canadian Alliance candidate, is too closely associated with the party in power, Mr. Provost said.
"You need somebody who is more independent than ever, who has more credibility than you would normally demand, because the organization is so fragile."
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