Rights and Democracy: Aurel Braun gags staff

That would be the 47-member staff of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development who had unanimously and publicly demanded that Braun, the Chair of the ICHRDD Board, be dismissed for harassment. Two other Board members were mentioned in that infamous staff letter: one, Jacques Gauthier, is now the interim President of the organization after Aurel's Board shoehorned him into office last Friday.

Paul Wells, writing of the mysterious burglary of the ICHRDD during the funeral of the late President Rémy Beauregard earlier this week, noted the new gag rule almost en passant. Good luck with that, Dr. Braun.

Incidentally, if by some chance any of those staff members happen to read my humble blog, they should feel free to send me their comments and updates by email, on a strictly no-attribution basis. No point letting Wells have all the fun.

UPDATE: More on the reign of Braun.

Ed Broadbent:

I do not recall, in my long public life, such an unwarranted assault on a senior public servant, none, and I don't recall a sequence of events where you had such a total undermining of a PMO appointee being treated so shabbily and dying in the middle of it.

Without drawing a direct parallel, I can think of only one incident, Herbert Norman, our envoy to Egypt, a friend of Lester B. Pearson, committing suicide [in 1957, after having been accused of being a Communist sympathizer].

That was the McCarthy era.

And to those of us watching the ballooning of the democratic deficit:

"This is another example of another independent agency having their independence either totally ignored or squashed or interfered with," Broadbent said.

"This is extraordinarily serious in terms of Canadian democracy."

[H/t Antonia in Bread and Roses]