Foreign Affairs Committee on March 30th, 2010

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I mention this because I asked the government an order paper question about when the officials knew. They told me through an order paper question that the government officials were aware of this issue around Shia law on February 15 and that other countries were worried. This notion that anyone was embarrassing the government is a red herring, and you just explained that.

Madame Cloutier, the last question is for you. In the documents there is some suggestion that Mr. Braun--I'm looking at page 5 of the handout that was provided to the committee--at a meeting of the board of directors in March 2009, the first one chaired by Mr. Braun, asked that you remove references he made to it in minutes of the meeting. Did you do that, and had you previously been asked by any other members of the board of directors to change the minutes of the meeting?

[Marie-France Cloutier]

I had never been asked before to change the minutes, except at the next board meeting. If there were corrections to be made or things that needed to be clearer, people would say so and then they voted on the minutes, which was their usual procedure.

At that point, out of courtesy, I sent the draft minutes to Mr. Braun, as the new chair, and asked for his comments. He called me back and gave me a whole bunch of comments, which were acceptable to me. They dealt with the way some motions were phrased and stuff like that. It made sense, so I made the changes, but he also wanted me to change the fact that the president, Mr. Beauregard, had told the board that we would not go to Durban II, wouldn't participate in Durban II, and wouldn't be involved in Durban II. He wanted me to change that to say it was the board that had decided that. But the decision had been taken prior to the board meeting, so I told him so. I said, “This is not what I recall, this is not in my notes, and I'll leave it as it is. At the next meeting, if the other board members agree with you, then I'll change it.” So he was really pressuring me to change that.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

So it was to change a decision that had been made, according to your notes, by Monsieur—

[Marie-France Cloutier]

By management.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

—by management to Mr. Beauregard, and he was trying to claim that it was made by the board?

[Marie-France Cloutier]

Yes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I want to thank all our witnesses for being here today.

We're going to have a subcommittee on Thursday morning, if that's okay, before our meeting at 10 o'clock, probably in the same room.

Once again, thank you very much for being here today.

The meeting is adjourned.