Finance committee  Thank you very much. I would like to thank this committee for inviting me to speak to you. I tremendously appreciate this opportunity. I will speak to only a small section of Bill C-38, and this is division 33 of part 4, the decision to close out the International Centre for Hum

Finance committee  Attempts at adaptation were highly problematic. I think Minister Baird and Mr. LeBlanc from the Liberals were very good in saying that there was a need to change from a funding model to one of providing expertise, but I want to get to something concrete, because there were certai

Finance committee  I'm talking about a structural problem. It was a badly drafted—

Finance committee  I cannot speak to how the decision was reached within the government; I can only speak to what Rights and Democracy did as an organization. I want to emphasize that from the beginning it was not meant to be an independent organization. It is funded by Canadian taxpayers.

Finance committee  Being a responsible custodian of public funds, I invested three years of my life working extremely hard to try to reform an organization that was meant to protect human rights and promote democracy in a non-partisan fashion. This was not an NGO, not a private organization, but on

Finance committee  It was closer to $13 million at the end.

Finance committee  It's not just DFAIT; other organizations can do it. Perhaps eventually a new organization will be founded more on the model of the National Endowment for Democracy in the United States, which is very effective. I cannot predict, but you should be aware of the fact that our invest

Finance committee  Yes, this came out from—

Finance committee  It was an organizational flaw, which resulted in Rights and Democracy malfunctioning in comparison to other organizations, but there was also one instance of fraud that perhaps I will have a chance to speak about.

Finance committee  Thank you. As I said before, the problem at Rights and Democracy was that despite the best efforts, it proved to be an unreformable organization, when you look for responsible governance, when you look for transparency and accountability. I mentioned the fact that the late pres

Finance committee  When I came in, I had some idea that Rights and Democracy had been problematic. There had been previous crises, and we knew that. The severity of it was not apparent until you got to the organization, until you began to ask for accountability and transparency. What was sad about

Finance committee  Mr. Hoback, you put your finger on it. As a director, and particularly as chair, you have a duty of care. You cannot carry the duty of care unless you are able to make fully informed decisions, unless you get timely and clear information, unless you have that information that we

Finance committee  I appreciate the question. I hope you read the Deloitte report, which did not cost $1 million. The report was actually devastating. I'm puzzled, as an academic, how you could read the report—I'd like to assume you read the report—and say this. The report basically stated that th

Finance committee  I think everyone has the right to be nervous about what was happening in a human rights organization where you could not get information. We did not control when, for example, the Deloitte report would be released. As members of the board, we wanted it to be out as soon as possi

National Defence committee  Thank you for the warning, and the invitation and opportunity to appear before the committee. This is indeed both a vital and urgent topic. I would like to state at the very beginning that from my perspective, any analysis of North American defence may be deconstructed only for