Thank you very much.
Mr. Chair and members of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, let me start my presentation by thanking you for giving me the opportunity to testify before you today. I have with me my three directors, and I intend to paint a realistic picture of the situation at Rights and Democracy, an agency I am honoured to be president of.
On December 13, at the request of the standing committee, both the Deloitte report and the SIRCO report were sent to the clerk of the committee.
On December 16 I was ready to appear before the committee along with the chairman of the board of Rights and Democracy, Professor Aurel Braun. Unfortunately, the committee meeting was cancelled, and I did not have the opportunity to address you. On the same day, however, the chair of the committee wrote to each individual member of Rights and Democracy's board of directors requesting additional information concerning an alleged discrepancy between the mandate initially given to the SIRCO investigation firm and the SIRCO report.
As I explained in my letter addressed to the chair of the committee on January 4, there is no such discrepancy. The full SIRCO report in my possession was sent to the committee. I provided all relevant explanations in my letter addressed to the chair, and I am ready to answer any questions you may have in this regard.
That being said, I wish to recall that Mr. Jacques Gauthier, the then acting president, affirmed on various occasions that his aim in involving the SIRCO firm was limited to obtaining information on the activities of the three former directors who were dismissed.
Our lawyers have provided me with an opinion to the effect that the dismissal of the three directors was indeed justified. It follows that the SIRCO report was indeed necessary.
Nonetheless, it is of the utmost importance to clarify that, despite everything, the SIRCO report, which you have, includes a volume entitled "Chronology", which contains everything that SIRCO considered relevant to the crisis at Rights and Democracy. Actually, it includes over 3,000 emails selected by SIRCO and filed chronologically.
This is why I am here to talk to you about due diligence, which I committed myself to after being appointed president. In fact, as I said in my letter of January 4, 2011, I met with the president of SIRCO to find out whether there were any organizational problems I should know about that might prevent me from getting Rights and Democracy on the right track. He brought to my attention some potential problems, which I outlined in my letter. For each of the issues raised, I did due diligence.
At the special board meeting on January 20, 2011, I presented to the directors the results of my due diligence. My report was well received by the board. A resolution was even adopted unanimously. The purpose of the resolution was to ask me to strengthen my report and present it to the committee as a final report on the matter. This is the report you received.
Moving to the Deloitte report, it was commissioned by my predecessor, Jacques Gauthier, to review certain governance issues at Rights and Democracy. It is important to understand that the Deloitte report was never intended to detect any fraud that may have been committed. The Deloitte report enabled me to identify structural issues going back a number of years. It is an important tool for us as we embark upon the process of rectifying and improving governance at Rights and Democracy.
I would briefly like to touch on certain governance problems raised in the Deloitte report. The Deloitte report stressed that the board of directors had not been given important information that would have allowed it to make informed decisions on some important projects. For example, the board of directors was not given a negative audit report on funding to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. This affected the directors' ability to make informed decisions on the matter. This discrepancy had not been indicated by previous boards of directors. But when new directors who were interested in playing their role more fully arrived, they came up against resistance from centre employees.
Despite the presence of some evaluation mechanisms at Rights and Democracy, the Deloitte report, as well as other evaluations conducted, highlighted insufficiencies in effective mechanisms for measuring the objectives and results of projects and programs by means of performance indicators.
In the past five years, $1.5 million has been distributed n the form of small grants for stand-alone activities. These are discretionary funds, in this case the Urgent Action and Important Opportunities Fund and the Solidarity Fund. During that period, 184 agencies, individuals and activities were funded in 38 countries, and only 12 of those 38 fell under our target countries. The vast majority of these were small grants of less than $10,000.
This type of operation leaves us open to arbitrary and discretionary situations, and is a considerable risk for Rights and Democracy. Why? Because it is impossible to carry out due diligence before granting this type of funding or evaluating the results because the cost of such an operation would be higher than the grant itself.
During the last few years, Rights and Democracy made grants totalling $729,000 to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The letter of agreement allocating these funds did not define any specific activities, objectives, or results. It might well be called a donation.
In fact, the OHCHR classified Rights and Democracy as a private donor in its annual report. Rights and Democracy is not a donor. This is not our mandate. We are distinct from CIDA, which actually gave some $745 million to various UN agencies in 2007-08.
Now, let's talk about the future. We have a number of challenges to face so that Rights and Democracy can continue to realize its mission as set out in its act of incorporation. Among other things, we will need to build an international development organization with larger financial means, to ensure a presence in the very countries we are working in and to implement programs producing measurable results, specifically in democratic development and human rights.
Here are some of these challenges.
Firstly, the board of directors has set new strategic orientations for the future that underscore the need to establish equilibrium between the two components of the Rights and Democracy mission: promotion of respect for human rights and democratic development. For example, Rights and Democracy presently does not work with members of Parliament or political parties, which are nonetheless key players in democratic development. Our partners are limited to members of civil society. There is a need to be more inclusive.
Secondly, we have the benefit of receiving core funding of $9 million allocated by Parliament. This funding is used essentially to provide relatively small grants to civil society organizations in 12 countries and to pay for some activities in Canada, as well as to cover our overhead costs. We can and we must do more by developing and implementing important projects and by diversifying our funding sources in order to substantially augment our impact on the improvement of states' practices in the field of human rights and democratic development.
For instance, we recently won a European Union bidding process for a program on democratic response to social division in Afghanistan, and we are shortlisted for another on freedom of expression. This shows that we can advantageously use a substantial portion of our core funding as leverage to raise funds from international donors.
Finally, we are taking steps to improve our internal capacity to develop and manage projects. We are also recruiting competent staffers to support our program in the countries where we are working.
Are we ready to take on the challenges of tomorrow? I firmly believe that we are, Mr. Chair. Rights and Democracy is a well-established organization, and we can also build on its past accomplishments. Despite the crisis that shook Rights and Democracy, we have implemented a number of worthwhile projects in the past year, and we are back on the right track.
I have taken the initiative to make visits to see how the programs are doing. Among other places, I have been to Thailand, Myanmar and Zimbabwe, and I can confirm that everything is going well.
That being said, we need your support in order to reaach our ambitious goal. For instance, I respectfully ask yo to consider some amendments to our legal framework in order to clarify the central powers in the field of fund-raising.
It is also very important to have our funding consolidated. The present situation, whereby we are receiving our funding from DFAIT and CIDA, is a serious constraint to us.
We would also benefit from a closer relationship with parliamentary committees as well as parliamentarians, in order to share our expertise, provide input, and raise your awareness of our programs.
Dear members of the committee, the changes I wish to implement, turning Rights and Democracy into a more efficient organization, implementing major programs in the field of democratic development and human rights using additional sources of funding from donors, will not happen overnight. However, what is of paramount importance at this time is that the will is there to put an end to the unfortunate crisis which took place at Rights and Democracy.
My aim is to build an organization that will be a Canadian flagship in the world for our values, which are shared by all Canadians.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
