Foreign Affairs Committee on Oct. 29th, 2009

[Razmik Panossian]

Certainly. I'll take this question because when the partnership was established I was at Rights and Democracy.

We established that partnership in 2006. As you remember, this was the period when the commission, which was utterly discredited, was being transformed into the council. In that context, we thought we should have a presence in Geneva at one point, but also to work with the Office of the High Commissioner in order to try to turn this transformation in a way that was positive.

The Human Rights Council has been quite problematic in many respects, in terms of the politicization of certain issues. Our partnership was not on the controversial issues. Our partnership was to strengthen the civil society component that is within the UN. It was relating the special mechanisms to special rapporteurs, for example, on issues like the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food or the special expert on Haiti, to work with them and strengthen that component. It was a three-year partnership that expired this year, on March 31, 2009, and at this point we are looking at the different possibilities for what our engagement should be, if any.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

In establishing an office in Geneva, did you run into some challenges there? Are you registered as an NGO in Geneva? Can you explain how that works under Swiss law?

[Razmik Panossian]

Yes, we are actually registered as an NGO. Obviously, we have to abide by Swiss law, so we followed the Swiss law in establishing a Rights and Democracy organization in Switzerland. It is registered as an independent organization, but the board of directors of Rights and Democracy Switzerland is entirely made up of either the board of directors of Rights and Democracy here, and the senior staff. For example, Marie-France is on the board of directors of that. There is no separate entity, so to speak, in reality, but in terms of the legal requirements of Swiss law it is a registered organization there with a bank account.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Since we're talking about NGOs, Rights and Democracy seems to exist in a sort of different framework. It's not really a crown corporation. How do we define what Rights and Democracy actually is in terms of Canadian function?

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

We are an agency of the Government of Canada. It's a shared governance agency under the terminology that is used by Treasury Board. That's what we are, similar to the Asia Pacific Forum. There are five such agencies under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Shared governance means that the board is appointed by the government, and so is the president. There is a sort of co-management. It's an arm's-length relationship, but it's not a long-arm's-length relationship.

We abide by all of the rules of Treasury Board. When I travel, I travel according to management board regulations. The Auditor General comes once a year to do her thing. We abide by the French language services legislation or the Official Languages Act.

There are slight differences. Our staff is not part of the federal staff. It is not part of the public service, but they do have the benefits of the public service.

I agree with you that we are a bit of a hybrid organization, those who share this notion of being a shared governance organization, but that's the way it is.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have one minute.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Thank you.

In terms of accountability mechanisms, decisions made by Rights and Democracy are approved by your board of directors, or are overseen, is that right?

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

Yes. The board of directors meets three times a year and is responsible for the orientation, the adoption of the budget, the adoption of regulations. Projects over $60,000 have to be approved by the board. There is an executive committee that meets in between the board meetings. The board has an audit committee. The board has a committee to select the John Humphrey Freedom Award and to review the performance of the president.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Just a last quick question. You know that of course the Government of Canada withdrew from participation in the Durban conference but was very focused on activities in Geneva. Did Rights and Democracy play any role, directly or indirectly, in planning for or participating in the conference in Durban?

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

No, we did not.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Beauregard and Mr. Lunney.

We'll move to Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our guests today.

I simply want to start with an observation on your work. It seems you do from A to Z. When I looked at your report, you go from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

I'm going to ask you about some of your projects and where they're at and then I want to ask you about governance. I have shared concerns with people about Congo. Mr. Obhrai, the parliamentary secretary, and I attended an event here on the Hill about what's going on in Congo, sexual violence to women. There have been some programs with the government on sexual violence to women.

Your program, the Congolese women's campaign against sexual violence in the DRC, is that ongoing, and is there a further commitment to that?

[Razmik Panossian]

The Congo involvement, yes, there is. We have a project we're hoping the board or the executive will approve regarding sexual violence in Congo. Our activities there are concentrated in the east of the country, where the conflict was, and they are very much focused on capacity-building of women's rights: organizations of women who have been victims but are also activists in trying to seek justice.

I should mention that one of our partners, a woman we trained, Julienne Lusenge, appeared as a witness in front of the UN Security Council at their invitation. So the type of work we do is both at the national and international level, highlighting the issue of sexual violence in Congo.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

One of the concerns many people have when they've learned of the situation in Congo.... You have in your document here 2,200 cases of recorded rape from January to June of 2008 in North Kivu, and I think the numbers are much higher. This is what has been reported.

It's not stopping. I guess one thing is to report--you identify a problem--but the other is to stop. One of the things we heard, as a follow-up to the engagement here on the Hill, was about policewomen who have gone to Sudan to train women to be intervenors.

To deal with victims is one thing. The other is to deal with the phenomenon that is rape as a weapon of war. It's very difficult to deal with if people are simply saying they'll deal with the aftermath. I think there's some movement to train women to deal with stopping rape, as opposed to documenting rape.

[Razmik Panossian]

The entire objective is to end impunity on this, and the work we're doing is not so much with the police side of things. It's really with the legal side of things, to bring the violators to justice at the national or the international level. That's the target we have chosen: the legal avenue to end impunity.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

And I hope we see further commitment, because government money has been spent on this issue. I think it was $15 million ending this year, and I hope the government will continue that project.

I'll go to Z, Zimbabwe. Many of us have been deeply concerned about that. You're launching an initiative to train reporters, and I just want to know what that means. As we know, it has been tenuous--and I'm putting it mildly--for reporters to be able to do their jobs, so how is this going to work?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Just before you do that, there would be some who would suggest that if you have success there, you should come back and train our reporters.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

There are some. Not me, of course.

Go ahead, Mr. Beauregard.

[Rémy M. Beauregard]

We received a two-year special allocation to work with independent reporters on top of our core funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs, because as you know, right now the press in Zimbabwe is at the beck and call of the government. So we're going to work with an organization called the Media Institute of Southern Africa, which groups several countries, including South Africa. We're going to train independent reporters, slightly similar to what we're doing with the Voice of Burma but in the sense that these are people who are going to review issues, report on them, and find ways to rebroadcast or print or share that information within Zimbabwe, because that's the issue.

Right now the government of Zimbabwe is controlling the press so much that people in Zimbabwe don't know what's happening in their country.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Going to the governance issue and looking at the recommendations, you highlighted in your report how you responded to the assessment that was done. One of the things that you can't do.... I guess I'll bring it up. It was mentioned by Madame Deschamps, I think, or Lalonde, and Mr. Pearson. The first recommendation is for the consolidation of core funding. We already heard from Madame Cloutier on this. The need is to ensure that we're looking at funding mechanisms so that you don't have too many inputs, that you actually have a comprehensive flow of funding. Is that the idea here?

And I guess back to the assessment that was done in your organization, how would that help you function better from a fiscal point of view, from being able to be accountable financially? That's the first question. So on the accounting piece, how is that going to help you?

Secondly, from an organizational structure, how is that going to help you in terms of your programs? Perhaps Mr. Beauregard could answer the second.

The first one, from an accounting and from a physical framework, would that help you? And secondly, from a program point of view, how would that help?

[Marie-France Cloutier]

As I said before, the problem we have is planning. At the beginning of the year, although we have our board adopt a budget, we adopt a budget with the presumption that we will get this money. We're not sure we're going to get it. So we're always kind of on a tightrope here. And as I said, we need to borrow the money in order to pay our staff for the first ten months of the year.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Is there an extra cost involved in that?

[Marie-France Cloutier]

Not really. I'll explain it more clearly.

The way we operate is we use the Government of Canada's pay services to do the salaries for our staff, and we're invoiced every second week. So for the first ten months of the year we don't pay them back. We're expecting money from the Government of Canada on the one hand and we're owing money to the Government of Canada on the other hand. But these two entities, although both are the Government of Canada, are not the same. So at one point we need to pay back the left hand. This is the way we do it.

It brings a lot of insecurity, not only on the planning side of the accounting but also to all our staff, because people are aware of this. We're a small team. We're not a 300-person department. We're under 50 people. So people know that, that we don't have this cashflow. We have a big cashflow problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madame Cloutier.

And thank you to all who have given their testimony today. I also want to thank you for having your documents presented. We appreciate the report.

We will now suspend and move into the next hour. We'll invite our guests to take their places at the table.

We're suspended.