Aurel Braun, a political science professor at UTM, is mired in a power struggle at a democracy advocacy group. Braun is chair of the board of directors for Rights and Democracy, a Montreal-based group that focuses on the promotion of democracy and the rule of law abroad and receives $11 million a year in federal funding. After months of internal strife, the group has come under increasing scrutiny after the death of its former president earlier this year, when all 47 staff members called for Braun’s resignation.
The federal government has nominated Gérard Latulippe as the new president of Rights and Democracy. Latulippe is an activist, former Quebec Liberal cabinet minister, and former Canadian Alliance candidate. He has proposed restrictions on Muslim immigration to Montreal.
The opposition has panned the nomination. “You don’t keep stacking it with more and more Conservative people, thinking that’s going to solve your problem,” said Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff at a press conference. Paul Dewar, the NDP foreign affairs critic, said the board remained problematic and criticized the Conservatives’ March 1 deadline for opposition parties to respond to the appointment.
Call for resignation
Former president Rémy Beauregard died of a heart attack the day after a tumultuous board of directors meeting on Jan. 7 where two board members resigned and another was dismissed. Beauregard had reportedly clashed with Braun over a review of Beauregard’s performance as president. Beauregard was not told about the review, and obtained a copy only after filing a freedom of information request with the Privy Council Office. In an op-ed in the National Post, Braun and several other senior members said large sums of money being dispensed from the president’s discretionary funds was one of the reasons for the review.
During Beauregard’s funeral, there was a break-in at the organization’s Montreal office and two laptops were stolen, including one belonging to a media liaison, according to the Globe and Mail. After Beauregard’s death, all 47 staff members submitted a petition calling for the resignation of Braun and several other senior figures at Rights and Democracy. The letter accused board members of malicious harassment against Beauregard.
The Globe also reported that three staff members who the board had perceived as leaders of the staff revolt had been dismissed with pay shortly after and Braun instructed others not to speak to media without written approval.
In a brief interview at UTM, Braun took exception to criticisms from former board members that he had mishandled Beauregard’s performance review. He maintained that the organization’s bylaws dictated that the performance review should go directly to the Privy Council Office. According to Braun, the board offered to meet with Beauregard before and after they submitted the review, but Beauregard said he didn’t have time.
Dispute over Israel
Board members recently appointed by the Conservative government have been accused of a pro-Israel bias. At the Jan. 7 meeting, the board voted to repudiate three grants to Middle East organizations whose activities it viewed as suspect. Beauregard voted in favour of the motions. “People have to be very careful that they deal in fact not myth,” said Braun, defending his actions from what he said was unfair media coverage of the controversy. “Beauregard said ‘We made a mistake in granting these. We should have done our homework better.’”
But according to an inside source who spoke on condition of anonymity, Beauregard actually changed his vote in order to avoid what he saw as an unnecessary confrontation with Braun and the board majority, who he felt were intent on seeing the loans repudiated.
“In the case of B’Tselem [one of the groups whose funding was repudiated], we found that they were a very biased organization, they were not impartial, they were very one-sided,” Braun said. The other two organizations, al-Haq and al-Mezan, were “toxic” and had links to terrorist groups.
Sarit Michaeli, a spokesperson for B’Tselem, said that Braun’s characterization of B’Tselem is wrong and that the organization is well respected in Israel. “We were outraged to read quotes in the press in which some members of the board referred to B’Tselem as a ‘questionable’ organization and ‘Israeli in name only,’” wrote Michaeli in an email. “Assuming these statements are accurate, they reveal profound even offensive ignorance about B’Tselem’s work and its role in Israeli society.”
What now?
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon nominated Latulippe as the new president on Tuesday, calling him “the ideal candidate to return Rights and Democracy to the promotion of Canadian values of freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.”
A spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry declined to say if it was considering taking any action on the staff petition, beyond supporting a forensic audit of Rights and Democracy’s finances by a private firm hired by the board.
Braun said he supported Latulippe as the new president and that the board is primarily concerned with ensuring transparency and accountability in how the group spends taxpayer money.
