Thank you very much. It's good to be back.
I'm pleased to come before you today, and particularly pleased in that context to see some former colleagues from all parties with whom I enjoyed working when I was a member of the House of Commons.
Unfortunately, the occasion for my appearance is extremely troubling. A unique Canadian institution, Rights and Democracy, is now dysfunctional. According to voices I respect at home and abroad—and I have spent the last three months in London and heard lots about it—it is quickly losing its reputation for integrity and independence.
In my brief comments, I want to say something about the nature and mandate of Rights and Democracy, the roles of the chair and the president, and finally, about the disastrous consequences for the late president, the staff, and the international reputation of the institution that resulted from the actions of a handful of incapable, intolerant, and mean-spirited individuals. In doing this I will be elaborating on the letter that I and three other former presidents of Rights and Democracy sent to the Prime Minister on January 13. Although all four former presidents were Privy Council appointees, the Prime Minister has not yet replied to that letter.
As members know, Rights and Democracy, while created by an act of Parliament, by law functions at arm's length from the government of the day. In its mandate for encouraging human rights and democratic development abroad, there are two points that I want to stress today.
The first point is the emphasis that is found in subsection 4(1) of the act on, first, human rights; and second, the International Bill of Human Rights. This clause makes clear that the agenda for the centre is not to promote our particular form of parliamentary democracy or our charter of human rights and freedoms. This is not a “Canadian imperialism light” mandate.
I would also draw your attention to the crucially important subsection 4(2), identifying what it calls the “major object” of the organization, which focuses not on the political processes of democracy as such but on a crucial objective of the centre; that is, to help reduce the gap between what some states are formally committed to in human rights or in their own constitutions, on the one hand, and on the other hand, what actually takes place within these nation-states.
This wording was brilliantly constructed and became the foundation for so much of the centre's activity in countries such as Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, Peru, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Thailand, and Pakistan, all of which had committed in principle in varying degrees to a range of international human rights, but at the same time were failing, at the time of the adoption of the act for the centre, to meet the international standards.
I would emphasize two points here. First, the wisdom revealed in the act is that in broad terms human rights come first. Many states—for example, in Latin America—for a good part of the 20th century had so-called competitive elections, but what they lacked was freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of the press, and the rule of law. Thus, as the broad sweep of western European and North American history has, I believe, shown, the core foundation for a real democracy is a society that embodies universal rights, which now include social and economic rights. Without human rights, so-called elections are a sham; hence the centre, in most but not all of its activities, has supported human rights activists and programs in developing countries.
In partial recognition of this fact—and I suspect most members won't know this, and there's no reason they should—the words “democratic development” were added by amendment to the centre's title in the Senate, not to balance in any way human rights against democracy, but to make it clear that the emphasis on rights is precisely what is involved in democratic development.
I want now to emphasize the importance of Rights and Democracy's reputation for complete independence from the government of the day—an independence that has now been shattered, I believe.
Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Chrétien and their foreign ministers understood this very well. They revealed this understanding by appointing people to the board without a partisan agenda. As we all know, a government can impose a partisan agenda simply by making carefully selected appointments, without any need for explicitly partisan instructions going to the appointees. The previous prime ministers carefully avoided doing this with Rights and Democracy.
Second, they expected Rights and Democracy at times to be in open disagreement with them on international human rights issues. And third, if I may say so, they appointed as presidents people they believed would act in this independent manner.
As president of Rights and Democracy, I openly advocated the inclusion of workers' rights clauses, as outlined in the covenant on economic and social and cultural rights, in all international trade agreements, and the speedy adoption of an international covenant on rights of indigenous peoples. Whether in substance or emphasis, such positions—and on a few other matters—were at variance with the government of the day. At no time did I receive criticism from the Prime Minister or the foreign minister. Indeed, during the 1990s and our activist work on the ground in many developing nations, my staff and I were frequently facilitated in our work by those fine public servants working on human rights issues in our embassies abroad.
In my view, it was because of Rights and Democracy's reputation for knowledge and independence of the government of the day that when I requested a meeting with President Clinton in the White House, or asked for a meeting with the King of Thailand, or with the presidents of Guatemala, Mexico, Rwanda, Eritrea, and Kenya, among others, these requests were granted and the meetings took place. The day Rights and Democracy becomes known not for its independence on rights matters from the government of the day but for supine acquiescence to the party political agendas of the day will be the day that foreign governments and NGOs alike will cease to be interested in the opinions of Rights and Democracy. If they want the Canadian government's view, they will simply call in the Canadian ambassador.
Regarding the roles of the chair and the president, according to the act, the prime purpose of the chair is to preside over meetings of the board as well as to take on other particular duties as might be assigned to him or her. The president, as its chief executive officer, “has supervision over and direction of the work and staff of the centre”.
In plain language, the chair of the board is not the CEO of the organization. It's the president who has and exercises the power of the CEO. When the board of the centre makes its decision on broad policy directions and major grants, it is then up to the president, in his responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the centre, to hire and supervise the staff and to make other decisions required to implement those objectives. The staff, notably the management team, are responsible to him and to no one else. Neither the chair nor any other member of the board has a right to impinge or encroach upon the president's authority to deal directly with the staff.
Early in 2009, when Mr. Braun became chair of the board, he came to an organization in a very good state of morale. Within the previous year it had not only received an excellent annual report on efficiency from the Auditor General, but in addition passed with commendation a five-year review conducted by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Its recent program on women's rights in Afghanistan had been singled out for praise by CIDA. In short, it's a matter of public record, not opinion, that under Mr. Beauregard's presidency, the management and staff were operating efficiently, transparently, and responsibly.
In contrast, after the arrival of Mr. Braun as chairman, to use the word he wrongly applied to the staff, it is the board itself that has become dysfunctional, has embraced a culture of dogmatism, and that lacks transparency.
I would add that it has also been since the arrival of Mr. Braun that the board of Rights and Democracy has lost two of its distinguished foreign members, one by resignation and the other failing to get reappointment; has been criticized by the International Federation for Human Rights; was criticized by William Schabas, the distinguished Canadian head of the Irish Centre for Human Rights; and, to complete the ignominious list, has had its judgments contradicted for the first time ever by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
In responding to questions about these matters, I will be very happy to elaborate.
In the course of all these developments, and following the tragic death of the president, Mr. Braun is probably the first chair of a public institution in Canadian history to have inherited a highly praised management team, as well as an exceptionally educated and dedicated staff, and then, by extraordinary mismanagement, united them in virtual unanimity in a vote demanding his resignation. If ever there was a cause for the dismissal of a public appointee on the grounds of gross incompetence, this is it, and I hope this committee will recommend it. I have never, to my knowledge, ever before called for the public dismissal of a public official. I am doing so today.
If I may, on a personal note, I'd like to conclude by saying something about a key member of the management team who has been singled out for particular criticism by some members of the board. Marie-France Cloutier has worked over 19 years for the centre, the first six for me, in a senior position, throughout my term as president. In all my years of public life, I never met a more competent or more loyal subordinate. She was a loyal employee, but she never hesitated to speak truth to power. That such a fine person and public servant was so arbitrarily dismissed says more about those who now run the centre than it does about her.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.