Foreign Affairs Committee on April 13th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are studying the situation at Rights and Democracy, the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development.

I want to start by thanking our witnesses for being here today.

Madame Trépanier, you're going to go first and then I believe Mr. Akhavan will go afterwards.

Could you try to keep your comments to ten minutes, or around that? I'm not going to cut you off at ten minutes, but if you could do your best, then we will do the same for Mr. Akhavan. Then we will go around the room with a seven-minute question round and a five-minute round.

We'll do the best we can. We got started a little late, so we'll try to go to 12 o'clock, or maybe 12:05, and then we'll have our second panel.

Once again, welcome. Thank you for being here. The floor is yours, and I will give you ten minutes to give your opening statement.

[Suzanne R. Trépanier, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee.

I want to express my thanks to all members of the committee for inviting me today and giving me this opportunity to testify on the events that took place in the months preceding and following my husband's sudden death.

Let me start by saying that it is not easy for me to come before you today. I am not a person who seeks publicity, but the wrongs that were committed against my husband are so serious that I feel I have no choice but to share what I know.

I hope you will understand that, my first language being French, I will testify in French today.

My name is Suzanne Trépanier. I was the wife of Rémy Beauregard who, until he passed away on January 8, was president of Rights and Democracy. I asked to appear before you in order to have an opportunity to set the record straight. There were allegations made against Rémy by some board members, including evaluation committee members, which are false. I no longer want my husband's reputation to be tarnished by people who, in my opinion, as a result of their irrational determination, their obvious bad faith, and the harassment they subjected him to over several months ended up really affecting his health.

Today, my main goal is to clear Rémy's reputation and ensure that there are consequences for the board members responsible for the missteps I shall testify to. Out of everyone, I knew Rémy the best. Over our 29-year partnership, I became his best friend and confidant. Our love for each other is great. All of that ended dramatically on the night of January 8.

I think it's important for you to know who Rémy Beauregard was. Rémy was a staunch human rights advocate. On a more personal level, he was particularly interested in the rights of the child, women, and seniors. With a master's in public administration from ENAP, Rémy, throughout his career, always promoted language rights and defended the rights of those least fortunate in his capacity as director general of the Ontario Human Rights Commission and as an advocate for the human rights of child soldiers and women in Uganda, first at the Ugandan Human Rights Commission and then War Child Canada.

Rémy was a career public servant. He worked for the David Peterson, Bob Rae, Mike Harris and Dalton McGuinty Ontario governments. Rémy was non-partisan, something he valued enormously in himself. Rémy was both frank and open. My observation was that he always respected authority, and he expected the same in return. Respect was very important to him be it at home or at the office. Rémy was a mediator, and probably one of the best in Canada. He shied away from conflict and always sought to find a compromise in arriving at an acceptable solution. Rémy was a simple and fundamentally good man. His most cherished desire was to be able to say, before dying, that he had done all he could in his power to make a difference in the world. And unfortunately, he spent the final hours of his life trying to save his reputation.

Now let me retrace the sequence of events. I think this is important, because the administrators have had no qualms about continuing to make accusations against Rémy even though he's no longer here to defend himself. Chronologically, one of the first complaints from the Deputy Chairman of the Board, Jacques Gauthier, appeared in a strictly confidential memorandum attached to Rémy's evaluation. He accuses Rémy of having organized a dinner after the screening of the film Burma VJ and for failing to invite both him and the chairman of the board. The dinner was organized at the last minute after the movie screening and was friendly and informal. I was with Micheline Lévesque and I asked her to come to dinner. The event organizer, the film producer, and the two Burmese guests joined us. To my knowledge, the chair and deputy chair had already left for the day. Now you might tell me that that incident was not at all important, but the chairman and deputy chairman saw that as evidence of a lack of loyalty on Rémy's part and they became increasingly vindictive toward him thereafter.

In that particular memorandum and in Rémy's performance appraisal, he was accused of unlawful activities, such as meeting with and financing terrorists. Those accusations are completely fabricated. And Rémy considered that to be an assault on his reputation. In my opinion, any reference to that in the documents is in bad faith. It was ridiculous how determined the chairman and deputy chairman were in trying to make their point. Categorizing Rémy's speech for an audience of over 150 people, including government delegations, as a meeting with terrorists is absurd.

And as for Rémy's vote on the repudiation of three $10,000 grants each to alleged terrorist organizations and his response “We should have done our homework better”, I'd like to stress that Rémy confided to me that he never questioned the legitimacy of those grants, but that in one of his typical attempts to be conciliatory, he wanted to avoid unhelpful debate. His comment was not an admission, but rather an observation that demonstrated that he was a mediator who always looked for a compromise. In fact, I was very shocked to read David Matas' article on the 24th of January, which was an attempt to guess at what Rémy may have felt on the eve of his death. And I quote:

Beauregard went to bed the night he died with the realization that those three grants, which he had spent so much time and effort defending, which, within the confines of the management and the Board he had staked his personal reputation, were wrongly made

What makes Mr. Matas think he can read the mind of a now deceased person whom he only met briefly on two occasions prior to January 7? Was he in bed with Rémy that night? In my opinion, that kind of commentary, in the current context, is insane.

Rémy has been accused of never being available for a meeting with the members of the evaluation committee—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Madame Trépanier, I know that we're asking you to fit a lot in a short period of time. The interpreters are trying to keep up and they're having a hard time. If you could slow down just a bit, that would be great.

[Suzanne R. Trépanier]

Rémy was accused of never being available for a meeting with the members of the evaluation committee, the purpose of which was to review the report. Here's an account of the number of days where the committee members involved were available out of the 50 dates proposed by the committee secretary from July 20 to October 10, 2009: Rémy 44, Aurel Braun 17, Jacques Gauthier 12, Jean Guilbeault 50, Donica Pottie 9.5 and Elliott Tepper 0.5. I'm sure you'll agree that saying Rémy went to great lengths to avoid the meeting is quite simply untrue.

I'd now like to address a number of facts to do with the meeting on January 6. I went with Rémy, and I heard everything through the door. I can assure you that Rémy made an impassioned plea as he sought to defend his rights and professional reputation. Neither Mr. Guilbeault, who was mandated by the board of directors to sit on the evaluation committee, nor Rémy saw or received a copy of the revised report prior to the meeting.

The deputy chairman refused to give Rémy a copy on the pretext that his hands were tied and that any changes would be made known to him verbally. After Rémy insisted, he was finally given a copy on the expressed condition that he hand it back at the end of the meeting, which he had no choice but to accept. It should be noted that the report was in English only.

The deputy chairman was furious when he saw that Rémy was in possession of the strictly confidential memo in which reference was made to employees' ethnic origins. When the deputy chairman insisted on knowing how Rémy had got a copy of the memo, he repeated several times that it was an integral part of his performance appraisal submitted to the Privy Council Office. Rémy questioned the chairman of the board regarding the written report's inaccurate and negative content when a verbal report singing his praises had been given by board members at their meeting in March 2009.

The chairman of the board reminded Rémy that as an extremely well paid, experienced, senior official—those are his words—he could defend himself without the help of committee members. Rémy proposed changes to the report, but the deputy chairman indicated that he was not prepared to make changes to the content of his report. A motion to that effect was voted on and the result was three against one. Rémy insisted that the minutes state that he had no choice in the matter.

Over the course of the meeting, which lasted over two hours, I could sense Rémy's distress and his stress levels rising, especially given the fact that the chairman of the board would not give Rémy a chance to speak. When he came out of the meeting, he told me that he definitely intended to contest the performance appraisal and to file a complaint regarding the three directors in question for their lack of professional ethics and for obstructing good governance. That night, I told Mr. Guilbeault and the three directors that I was concerned about Rémy and that his stress levels were higher than ever. Rémy did not sleep that night. He told me that it was very hard for him to face the entire situation. After fighting for almost his entire life and career to defend the rights of others, he wasn't able to defend his own rights.

Jacques Gauthier's insinuations in the memo attached to Rémy's performance appraisal were particularly upsetting to him. Rémy also said that it was very difficult for him to come to terms with Aurel Braun's aggressive attitude towards not only him but also certain members of the board and his staff. How was Mr. Matas able to speak on April 1 about Rémy's performance appraisal for the period July 2008 to March 2009 when he was only appointed to the board in November 2009? On January 6, Rémy asked a similar question of the chairman of the board and more specifically concerning the relevance of the memo he attached to the performance appraisal given that he had only held his position for three weeks out of the period covered by the performance appraisal.

I should say that that kind of behaviour, both in terms of tone and content, is quite unworthy, shocking, inappropriate and downright incompetent coming from the mouths of members of the board including, and especially, from the chairman and deputy chairman of a paragovernmental human rights and democracy advocacy organization.

I'd like now to refer to other events that I think it important to mention. On January 7, 2010, Rémy was very upset to learn when a board meeting was called to order that the chairman had decided to change the agenda and have discussion on the chairman's report, that Rémy was suppose to present, and the item regarding his performance appraisal pushed back a day, to January 8. I would point out that Rémy had worked tirelessly on his report over the holidays as the report covered the period from June through December 2009. It was important to Rémy that that progress report be presented at the beginning of the meeting because it would shed light on other items to be raised later in the meeting for which decisions had to be made.

Rémy's sudden death on January 8, 2010, marked the start of an extremely stressful period for me, and I'm just as affected now as I was then. I received a condolence call from an official at the Privy Council Office, which was a tad shocking given that, in his quest for justice in the matter of his performance appraisal, Rémy had had multiple meetings and exchanges in the fall of 2009, notably with Eileen Boyd, assistant cabinet secretary at the PCO, on five occasions, with Keith Christie, assistant deputy minister for the Global Issues Sector at Foreign Affairs, on at least three occasions, with Jean-Maurice Duplessis, operations director at the Office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and on two occasions, with Claude Carrière, foreign policy and defence advisor at the Privy Council Office, in order to find an acceptable solution to a situation that was degenerating. He never received any response to his requests however.

I also received a letter of condolence from Minister Cannon, which was very complimentary to Rémy. I saw this as a bit of an affront, as I knew that the minister never responded to Rémy's request on November 3 to meet, a request that was also made of Jean-Maurice Duplessis, in the minister's office. To my knowledge, the very positive appraisal of Rémy's work for the same period, made by the minister and by Foreign Affairs, was not reflected in this performance appraisal report. In my opinion, the government failed in its duty to act as a good parent would, and that's what led to the ongoing governance issues.

In addition to the stress as a result of Rémy's death, I was faced with what could be called a double affront in the days that followed. First, there was the press release from the chairman of the board offering his condolences, which I consider was hypocritical, and then the leaking to the media of the email I had sent to the chairman on the issue. The fact that the staff responsible was suspended ended up delaying and complicating the administrative steps that had to be taken upon Rémy's death, and I am the one who suffered as a result.

Contrary to what Jacques Gauthier said on April 1, the staff never gave me Rémy's computer because he had taken his equipment with him when he travelled from Montreal to Toronto to go to the board meeting. After Rémy's death, I brought all his things back to our home in Montreal. On March 1, Mr. Gauthier demanded that I return the possessions before 5:00 p.m. on March 3. I assured him that it was my intention to return everything, indicated that I was in Toronto for medical care and that the deadline he had set was impossible to meet. On March 3, I received a second notice setting a new deadline of midday, March 5, and in which Mr. Gauthier indicated that a failure to comply may lead to legal action.

Contrary to what Mr. Matas suggested on April 1, exchanges between Rémy and Eileen Boyd at the Privy Council Office confirmed that the office was truly informed as to the situation at the board, and of the fact that it had been going on for several months. Rémy was not a board member at the time specified in the allegations published on two or three occasions in the National Post, in 2002, and in fact not until several weeks later, contrary to what Mr. Gauthier implied on April 1. It is sad that Rémy was surrounded by a good team and that he trusted his staff, but that he was not afforded the same courtesy by certain members of his board.

You'll agree that Rights and Democracy would never had been talked about as much. It is ironic that the visibility that the centre is currently experiencing right across Canada fulfills one of the Privy Council Office's expectations, as defined in Rights and Democracy's mandate. Moreover, the crisis is now the subject of attention elsewhere in the world, as you can see from the newspaper articles from FIDH, by Gerald Steinberg, William Schabas, etc.

I want you to know that I will, for my entire life, regret having supported Rémy, as I always have in my life, in his decision to accept the mandate at Rights and Democracy. Not because of the organization per se or because of the staff who work there, but rather because of the harassment he was subjected to for several months, which had a major hand in pushing up his stress levels until they became unsustainable. I will never forgive myself for not managing, despite all my efforts over the last months of his life, to convince him to finally drop the matter. He told me again and again that he would never accept having his reputation attacked, that he would fight to the bitter end and that he would not resign because he had a duty to his employees at Rights and Democracy. That was the great Rémy Beauregard.

For all the reasons I have outlined here today, I would call on the Office of the Privy Council to proceed with the withdrawal of the performance appraisal report and the accompanying notes and appendices in my husband's file. I am asking for a public apology from the seven board members who denigrated Rémy's skill as a manager, among other things, in the media.

I am calling for the immediate replacement of the four board members who made slanderous remarks about Rémy in public, and I am referring to Aurel Braun, Jacques Gauthier, Elliot Tepper and David Matas. In my view, those directors do not understand their role and are acting against the interests of Rights and Democracy by trying to impose their personal ideologies.

I ask that copies of my testimony be attached to the personal files of those four directors in the Privy Council Office. I also call on the government to order an independent public inquiry in order to shed light on all that has transpired and the events that occurred within Rights and Democracy's board over the past year.

Members of the committee, I would like to thank you for the time you have afforded me today. I hope that my testimony will have informed you of the situation and that I was not too emotional, as some of you thought I might be. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Madame Trépanier.

We're now going to move over to Mr. Akhavan, for ten minutes.

[Dr. Payam Akhavan, Professor of International Law at McGill University, and Former Member of the Board of Directors at Rights & Democracy, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee, I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to share with you my views on the events that led to the crisis within Rights and Democracy.

I appear before you today because of my belief that justice should prevail over political expedience. It was very much to my advantage to remain silent, but faced with the abuse of power in an organization committed to human rights, I could not in good conscience remain silent.

I was honoured to be appointed by this government as a director on February 29, 2008. I was aware then that in December 2002 the Inspector General had issued recommendations to improve financial oversight and management and staff relations. The board immediately began to implement these under Janice Stein, who was then the chair, and then under the presidency of Jean-Paul Hubert. With his appointment as president by the government on June 26, 2008, Rémy Beauregard successfully continued this process.

In August 2008 the five-year review of Rights and Democracy by Foreign Affairs concluded that “The overall results of this review...are positive” and have “confirmed the effectiveness and relevance” of the organization's activities in the field. The Auditor General's June 9, 2009 report was also positive. In short, contrary to what the current chair Aurel Braun asserted before this committee on April 1, upon his appointment on March 11, Rights and Democracy was not dysfunctional, but in the months that followed the organization disintegrated as a minority of directors engaged in a hostile takeover.

The conflict began within the board after Mr. Braun's first meeting as chair on March 26. The board majority was highly satisfied with Mr. Beauregard's performance, but the chair instructed the secretary not to record this in the minutes. Messrs. Braun and Gauthier were concerned about small grants to three organizations. As a compromise, the president agreed not to provide further funds. Mr. Braun also insisted that he should have a veto over all future grants. Again, we accepted a review procedure as a compromise. Messrs. Braun and Gauthier opposed participation in the UN Durban Review Conference, but Mr. Beauregard had already decided to boycott this event, with the unanimous support of the board.

Instead of praising the president, these directors submitted a secret evaluation to the Privy Council, with baseless accusations, half-truths, and distortions that disregarded or minimized his successful leadership. It attempted to portray him as anti-Israel on the very issues that had already been resolved to everybody's satisfaction. The chair's harsh note to the report called it “constructive criticism”; to us it looked more like character assassination.

Earlier demands by the president and board majority to see the evaluation report were rebuffed and a law firm was retained at a cost of $17,298 to justify the decision. When it was disclosed under the Privacy Act at the June 18 board meeting, the majority considered repudiating it. Again, as a compromise, we gave them an opportunity to amend it, and they agreed.

Our trust was betrayed. There was no intention to honour this agreement. Instead there was a plan to change the board to the liking of the chair and his allies. On September 4, Ms. Donica Pottie, the government representative on the board, suddenly resigned just seven months into her three-year term. She had earlier submitted a positive report on Mr. Beauregard on behalf of the government. With her removal, the chair was poised to get a seven-to-six majority with two new appointments.

On October 19, Mr. Braun and his allies suddenly postponed a board meeting on just two days' notice. The board majority was excluded from this decision, which cost $15,000 in cancellation fees. Still short of a majority, they wanted to avoid consideration of the report, which they had failed to amend four months earlier. They also wanted to block reappointment of Guidos Riveras Franck, a respected Bolivian democracy expert who Minister Fletcher and Minister Kent had regularly consulted.

On November 8 I wrote to Mr. Gauthier, asking him whether there was an intention to gain, and I quote, “a decisive majority of board members that will once and for all silence the dissenting board members and probably also set the stage for removal of the president and his senior staff”. That is what I wrote to Mr. Gauthier on November 8.

Once the two new appointments were made on November 13, Mr. Braun immediately called a meeting of the board for January 7. Having secured a one-vote majority, the performance committee met with Mr. Beauregard on January 6 at an acrimonious meeting in which they dishonoured their promise to correct the report.

At the board meeting, it became clear that this one-vote majority intended to completely exclude the other half, having already decided everything in advance. For directors like Sima Samar, who had travelled all the way from Kabul to participate, this was greatly insulting. Some days earlier, in e-mail exchanges relating to our concerns, Mr. Navarro-Genie, one of the directors, had referred to us as “third worldists”, comparing us to Robert Mugabe, and contrasting us to “Her Majesty's British North American subjects”.

As we had predicted, this had become a hostile one-party board, and the stage was set to remove Mr. Beauregard and management. When Mr. Riveras Franck was kicked off the board, it was the last straw. Dr. Samar and I decided to walk out in protest. It was a moment of utter shame, the resignation of an Afghan human rights champion from a Canadian human rights agency. That day Mr. Beauregard was visibly distressed, knowing he would probably have to resign with a stain on his reputation. Little did we know that this great friend and colleague would leave us for good shortly afterwards.

After his tragic passing, before his funeral could even be held, we were shocked that internal documents were leaked to Ezra Levant and Gerald Steinberg to continue smearing his reputation. The opinion editorials by the seven board members against him were simply shameful. The call by 45 courageous staff for the resignation of the chair and two vice-chairs was an expression of respect for an admired leader, and of loyalty to the integrity of the institution. In order to exact revenge, the same board has now hired expensive lawyers and private investigators to persecute the staff. This has already cost an estimated half a million dollars of taxpayers' money.

In the new era of accountability the board proclaims, it has amended a bylaw to retroactively justify awarding these lucrative contracts without tender. This only adds to other financial irregularities concerning the board's budget. We can only be thankful for your committee's oversight of Rights and Democracy.

In closing, I would note that the honourable members of this committee may have competing political agendas, but I'm confident they all agree that unethical conduct cannot go without consequences. The smearing of Mr. Beauregard's reputation is a manifest abuse of power, and probably also a violation of the provincial occupational health and safety act. The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety recognizes that making false accusations against an employee is a prime example of workplace bullying and that such psychological harassment can have serious health consequences.

Let us consider the allegation in Mr. Gauthier's famous memorandum that "While attending a conference in Cairo in the fall of 2008, Mr. Beauregard met with representatives of Hamas and Hezbollah." Mr. Gauthier stated further that the legality of those meetings was obviously questionable. He clarified during the June board meeting that he was referring to the Criminal Code of Canada. In particular, section 83.18 provides that contributing directly or indirectly to the activity of a terrorist group is punishable by ten years of imprisonment. In his response to the board, Mr. Beauregard had said that accusation was patently false and considered it an attack on his reputation.

So without a shred of evidence—without a shred of evidence—a distinguished bureaucrat with a spotless record was accused of being a criminal. Which members of this committee would tolerate such behaviour if they were the victim?

In its great wisdom, this government appointed Mr. Beauregard as president. This committee must now unanimously ensure that justice prevails and that this great Canadian agency is salvaged. To that end, I would urge the committee to consider the following recommendations.

First, that the evaluation report, including the chair's note and all other relevant documents, be removed from Mr. Beauregard's record, so that Mr. Beauregard's name and honour can be redeemed once and for all.

Second, call on the board of directors of Rights and Democracy to issue an apology to Mr. Beauregard's family.

Third, call on the chair, Mr. Braun, and the vice-chairs, Mr. Gauthier and Mr. Tepper, to resign because of their misconduct.

Fourth, consider reconstituting the entire board of directors in view of the tremendous damage to Rights and Democracy's international reputation and the loss of confidence by the Canadian public.

That concludes my submission, Mr. Chair. I thank you and the committee for your kind attention.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Akhavan.

We're going to start with Mr. Rae, for seven minutes.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

I have a very brief comment I would like to make. I have never clearly told the committee that, as former leader of the official opposition in Ontario and provincial premier, I knew Rémy Beauregard quite well and worked closely with him. I always found that he was a highly intelligent man with great integrity. Knowing him as I did over the years, I was frankly astonished by the comments that I read and heard, as were many others.

I would first like to thank Ms. Trépanier for the courage she has shown in testifying here today and for presenting a key perspective on the conflict experienced within the board of directors. I do not think that her remarks can be brushed off. The many problems that existed within the board, and that have been created since, must be dealt with.

My first question is mainly for Mr. Akhavan.

Mr. Akhavan, I was reading an article by Mr. Cooper in the April 7 Calgary Herald. Mr. Cooper is a professor at the University of Calgary. I'm sure you're familiar with him. He claims to have received information from a member of the board, Mr. Marco Navarro-Genie. Mr. Cooper states in his article that Mr. Navarro-Genie told him that

...between May 2009 and January 2010, Beauregard managed to turn several "international" members of the board against the performance review committee by granting them favours, including travel perks, interns, and funding for projects in their home countries....

These are serious allegations again. There seems to be a pattern on the part of board members of making very consequential allegations against Mr. Beauregard, which he's not in a position to respond to, which I find deplorable, I must say.

Since you were a member of the board, could you comment on this? Could you also comment on any allegation with respect to any conflicts you may have been under, or allegedly under, during your time as a member of the board?

[Dr. Payam Akhavan]

Thank you, Mr. Rae.

Rights and Democracy had three very distinguished international members. Mr. Riveras Franck of Bolivia, as I mentioned, was consulted by Minister Kent and Minister Fletcher on democracy promotion in the Americas. Ms Sima Samar is a recipient of the Order of Canada, one of the only people, other than Nelson Mandela... Ms Soyata Maïga is the African human rights commissioner on womens' issues. To make these kinds of defamatory accusations against them I think speaks to the attitudes, frankly speaking, of the board and exactly what they did to Rémy Beauregard and anyone who stood in their way.

What's interesting is the idea that because a student intern was sent to Bamako, Mali, to assist Ms Soyata Maïga, that was the way Rémy bought her vote. That's just astonishing, to suggest that Sima Samar, who received $8 million for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission from CIDA over the years, was being bought by Mr. Beauregard. The same accusation appeared strategically yesterday in Canwest, where I'm accused of having requested a nomination to a UN position, which is absolutely baseless. I have the e-mail right before you where I asked for the advice of Mr. Beauregard in relation to a commission of inquiry for war crimes in Sri Lanka, which was not established by the UN, which this government promoted, and which members of this government wanted me to participate in. I asked for his advice about a possible nomination. But if the greatest accusation they can come up with against me is that I wanted to help the victims of mass murder in Sri Lanka, well, I stand guilty as charged.

We have to remember that they have hired a private investigative firm and spent tens of thousands of dollars to go through thousands of Rémy Beauregard's e-mails, and this is the best accusation they can come up with. I think they're not getting good value for their money.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Do you have any idea how Canwest would have received that e-mail? Presumably it's proprietorial to the board and to the organization, as well as to the investigative firm that was doing the work of going through the e-mails, is that right?

[Dr. Payam Akhavan]

Well, of course it's the same way as Ezra Levant and Gerald Steinberg and others were given internal documents. But if I may just add, what I find astonishing is that Mr. Navarro-Genie is making these accusations. Before Mr. Beauregard's death, I was exercising my duty of care as a board member looking at the books of the board, and I noticed, for example, that Mr. Navarro-Genie had been in Haiti on a mission of Rights and Democracy, and this was the same mission that Mr. Riveras Franck had gone on earlier with the accusations of travel perks. Mr. Navarro-Genie stayed four extra days for personal purposes and he charged Rights and Democracy and received $1,300 for four days in which he stayed beyond the mandate entrusted to him by Rights and Democracy.

I was astonished to learn as well that Mr. Jacques Gauthier, who had gone on a six-day trip to China, received 11 days of fees from Rights and Democracy totalling $3,575, whereas the other members of the delegation received $500 honorariums.

If I may just add, the budget of the board, which was $130,000 for the previous fiscal year, was already approaching $300,000 when I left the board. A big part of that was honoraria that were paid to board members who come here and speak as if they're volunteers. The honoraria, which were budgeted at $40,000, were approaching $80,000 by the time I left the board. It's very unfortunate, really, that they need to now start smearing international members.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

What is the practice with respect to board...? Board members are paid by an order of council? Can you make me familiar with what the pattern is?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Akhavan, I'll just get you to finish with that answer and we'll move on, but go ahead.

[Dr. Payam Akhavan]

Board members are paid an honorarium for every full day of work that they do and not for full days of work that they don't do.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Under what conditions do board members travel? Do they get the permission of the chairman of the board to go on a mission or something and then they get paid for that and their expenses are also covered?

[Dr. Payam Akhavan]

Yes, expenses are covered.

Getting back to Mr. Gauthier, if you're on a six-day trip to China, why are you getting 11 days' honorarium? I'm afraid that there will be further revelations that will have to be made about some of the payments that were made.

If I may just conclude, one of the issues we have to consider is that Mr. Navarro-Genie, who has been leaking this information to the press, was for a week at the office of Rights and Democracy in a position as a senior adviser. We don't know what his mandate was, how much he was paid. The contract was given to him by fellow board member acting president Jacques Gauthier. Was Mr. Navarro-Genie perhaps receiving a very generous salary to go through the thousands of e-mails the private investigators had discovered in order to find some dirt against me and international board members to leak to the media? Is this a good use of taxpayers' money? We have projects in Haiti and Afghanistan, we have victims of sexual violence in the Congo, and people are trying to go on a witch hunt against me and Dr. Samar. It's just astonishing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Mr. Rae and Mr. Akhavan.

We're going to now move to Madame Lalonde, for seven minutes, please.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Thank you, I will be sharing my time with Ms. Deschamps.

First of all, Ms. Trépanier, thank you for your appearance. I understand your emotion. I had the opportunity to get to know Mr. Beauregard, to appreciate him and to hold him in high esteem. Rest assured that your requests will guide our work going forward.

Mr. Akhavan, you gave us a very clear report. You are calling for a complete overhaul of the board so that Rights and Democracy can once again become the organization it used to be. You spoke of three small grants to two Palestinian organizations and one Israeli organization, which were in part responsible for the crisis. On the week-end, there was a broadcast on Radio-Canada about an organization called NGO Monitor and its influence in Quebec and Canada. To your knowledge, is there any link between NGO Monitor and the members of the board, as well as the positions that were taken with respect to the three small grants made to the two Palestinian organizations and the third Israeli one, which is favourable to the Palestinian cause?

[Dr. Payam Akhavan]

Thank you, Ms. Lalonde.

I want to begin by saying that there are legitimate concerns about the demonization of Israel at the United Nations. I've worked with the United Nations for ten years, and 80% of the resolutions are against Israel. Sudan, Iran, Myanmar, Zimbabwe--they all escape scrutiny. But I think organizations like NGO Monitor have gone too far. They have gone too far because they are suppressing all dissent. The chair, Mr. Braun, had unsuccessfully attempted, against the opposition of board members, to invite Mr. Steinberg to address the board. We know that one of the first articles that came out after the death of Mr. Beauregard was that of Mr. Steinberg, published in The Jerusalem Post and in the National Post. He had access to internal documents of the board. The repudiation of these grants by Mr. Matas, in his 15-page memorandum, is based entirely on reports of NGO Monitor, so the link is clearly there.

I want to share with you what Yossi Alpher, who's a former adviser to the present defence minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, and a former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, said. This is what he has to say about NGO Monitor. He says that NGO Monitor “seems dead set on eliminating human rights monitoring of Israel entirely and smearing anyone who supports this vital activity.” This is a former adviser to Ehud Barak saying this.

Within Israel itself, where I have many friends and colleagues, NGO Monitor is seen as a blatantly political far-right organization. I'm baffled as to how this organization can have so much influence over an institution like Rights and Democracy.

I also want to add that some of the representations that have been made... Never mind the example of B'Tselem, which is an Israeli organization, but the chair says it's Israeli in name only. This is the language of the far right in Israel, which is basically saying that unless you're blindly obedient, you're a traitor to Israel.

Even if we look at Al Mezan, the organization in Gaza, which incidentally has also issued reports condemning the Palestinian Authority, condemning Hamas, calling for an investigation of Hamas rocket attacks against southern Israel as well, which is not mentioned at all, it's interesting that on February 13, 2007, because of the lawsuit that was brought against NGO Monitor before the Israeli courts by the Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem, a defamation and libel lawsuit, Mr. Steinberg issued the following retraction. He said, “I regret having called Al Mezan an organization that 'justifies violence'.” This is Mr. Steinberg, as a result of an Israeli court proceeding, admitting that Al Mezan does not justify violence.

Now, Al-Haq is also interesting. The Israeli courts have never convicted Mr. Shawan Jabarin of terrorism. What they have said is that there is a travel ban against him, and this is what the U.S. State Department country report recently said about this Israeli court decision. This is the United States State Department human rights report for 2009:

On March 11, the Israeli High Court barred human rights defender Shawan Jabarin, director of Al-Haq, a Palestinian Human Rights NGO, from traveling outside the West Bank without holding a hearing.

This was an ex parte hearing. There was no chance to contest the evidence.

It goes on:

Based on evidence that Jabarin and his lawyer were not allowed to see, the court refused to lift the travel ban imposed on him by military order in 2006.

I just want to end by saying that in a conflict zone one will always encounter people who have had all sorts of different pasts. Mr. Ariel Sharon was accused by the Kahan commission in Israel of war crimes in Lebanon, and he became Prime Minister.

The accusation of Shawan Jabarin, who was until 1987 a member of the PFLP, is interesting, because our own foreign minister, Maxime Bernier, met with Riyad al-Maliki, the foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority, in December 2008, I believe. Mr. al-Maliki was a senior member of the PFLP for many years, yet this government pledged to give $300 million to the Palestinian Authority.

So the problem here is that there is a legitimate concern about the demonization of Israel, one-sided attacks, but I think that NGO Monitor and other organizations have gone too far. We are more extreme in Canada than people are in Israel.

I have a student who's an Israeli air force pilot who flew bombing runs over Lebanon. He seems to be more reasonable about these issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you. That's all the time we have.

We're now going to move back over to this side, to Mr. Abbott for seven minutes.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

Madame Trépanier, it's very, very difficult for you to have come. I wish to express my sincere condolences for your loss. At a human level, it is far beyond anything that we can be discussing at this table. I thank you for coming.

[Suzanne R. Trépanier]

Thank you.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Akhavan, I want to get to some common ground with you, so perhaps we could begin with legislation that sets out Rights and Democracy. You'd be familiar with subsection 31.(1). It reads:

31. (1) The Chairman shall, within four months after the end of each fiscal year, transmit to the Minister a report of the activities of the Centre for that fiscal year, including the financial statements of the Centre and the Auditor General’s report thereon.

You're familiar with that clause, I'm sure.

The other clause that I wanted to draw to your attention was from bylaw number 1, paragraph 3. It reads:

The board of directors appointed in accordance with the act shall establish the policies which determine the activities of the centre, and shall approve the annual budget of the centre.

So we're on the same page.

[Dr. Payam Akhavan]

Yes, of course.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

There is one more--clause 20: as provided by the act, the president is the chief executive officer of the centre and shall supervise and direct the work of the centre--and this is the important part--in accord with the policies established by the board.

Are you and I in agreement that the board is in charge or should be in charge of the policies of the centre?