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—