Rights and Democracy: how a smear is done

Heavy hitters testified as scheduled before the parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International development, now looking into the troubled Rights and Democracy agency. There was Suzanne Trépanier (the widow of former R&D President Rémy Beauregard); two other former R&D presidents, Ed Broadbent and Warren Allmand; and former Board member Payam Akhavan, who resigned in disgust in January.

There is really very little left to say about the egregious antics of the Gang of Seven, and there were no surprises today. I missed Akhavan's testimony, but nothing earth-shattering has been reported. Mme. Trépanier, recounting the abuse of her late spouse by members of the Rights and Democracy Board, called for a public inquiry, as have many others. Allmand and Broadbent spoke of the non-partisan nature of the Board in years past, and called for something to be done without delay about the current mess. "The soul of the Centre" is in peril, Broadbent said, and the reputation of Rights and Democracy in the international human rights community has been seriously harmed.

Nothing new in any of this.

The real story today was itself a story: one that appeared this morning in the Edmonton Journal under the by-line of Steven Edwards, Canwest's New York correspondent.

Recall the timely appearance of Senator Linda Frum's rather unconvincing defence of the Braun Gang--warmed-over talking points, actually--back in March? And now we have another suspiciously timely piece, a shabby trash-job on Payam Akhavan, appearing on the very same day when he was slated to testify.

This article should be used in J-school as a graphic illustration of spin. The rot begins at the hed: "Rights and Democracy board member used 'inappropriate' tactics to lobby for UN post." That sets up the story nicely.

Well, what did Akhavan do? A new UN commission on war crimes in Sri Lanka was being mooted (it was never established), and he asked then-President Rémy Beauregard to recommend him for it.

That's it. That's all. But this is how Edwards spins it in his third graf:

The administrative chief in question was Remy [sic] Beauregard, whose job as president essentially placed him in service of the board. Not only would such an official find it difficult to turn down a request from a board member, but Akhavan also sought the UN appointment through a division of the international body that, documents show, had earlier received an $824,000 over four years from the taxpayer-funded Rights and Democracy.

"[F]ind it difficult to turn down?" How so? What would have happened to Beauregard had he refused? And then there is Edwards' innuendo about a conflict of interest. Only when we read all the way to the last (16th) graf do we discover that Akhavan's request was made after the partnership between Rights and Democracy and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights had been terminated.

Here are the fourth and fifth grafs:

Akhavan, a professor of international law at McGill University, boasts a resume showing he is amply qualified to join an inquiry such as the one some in the UN were mulling in order to investigate alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka.

But for some, the memo and Beauregard's subsequent letter of recommendation to the UN raise questions of propriety.

It turns out that "some" is "a senior UN-focused executive familiar with squabbling among past and present officials with Rights and Democracy...who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject matter." His use of the term "inappropriate" was qualified (and is found only in the seventh graf):

"This may not be a breach of fiduciary duty, but it appears to be inconsistent with what the role of a director should be. So it strikes me as inappropriate."

"Appears to be inconsistent." "Strikes me as inappropriate." Yet the word "inappropriate" finds its way, unqualified, into a hed and lede, and a simple request for a letter of reference becomes the snarl-word "tactics." Is it really "inappropriate" to ask for a written endorsement from the President of your own organization for a job for which you are "amply qualified?"

A shameful piece. And, as noted, check the timing.

The first time is happenstance. The second time is coincidence. But if this happens again, I think we can safely conclude that it's enemy action.

Rights and Democracy: B'Tselem strikes back

B'Tselem, the Israel-based human rights group labeled "toxic" and "Israeli in name only" by the Chair of Rights and Democracy, Aurel Braun, has issued a stiffly-worded press release calling for an end to his on-going slander of the organization.

Rather than paraphrase, I reproduce that release, dated February 4, in its entirety. It's high time that the mainstream media, which have made free with Braun's comments of late, take note of it.


4.2.10
Press Release - for immediate publication

B'Tselem demands a halt to baseless assault by Rights and Democracy chair

B'Tselem has written to demand that Board members of the Canadian organization Rights and Democracy stop maligning B'Tselem's name. In a letter by B'Tselem Executive Director Jessica Montell, to Aurel Braun, Chairman of Rights and Democracy, Montell demands that he cease his ongoing public attacks on the Israeli human rights NGO.

B'Tselem read in the Canadian press that the board of Rights and Democracy voted to "repudiate" its grant to the organization. "We were outraged to read quotes in the press in which some members of the Board cast baseless aspersions on B'Tselem and the integrity of our work", writes Montell. "These statements reveal profound, even offensive ignorance about B'Tselem's work and its role in Israeli society".

In its twenty years of activity, B'Tselem has earned a reputation both in Israel and around the world as the most reliable source for information on human rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Leading journalists, policymakers and academics consistently cite B'Tselem as their primary source for reliable information about human rights and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. B'Tselem is proud of its role in generating Israeli public discussion regarding human rights, and in fostering real improvements in Israel 's human rights policies.

In addition to its documentation and advocacy activities, B'Tselem works closely with the Israeli military authorities in order to promote accountability. Israel 's Judge-Advocate General has repeatedly praised his cooperation with B'Tselem, including in a recent feature in Israel 's Haaretz newspaper: "My goal is to get at the truth, and they definitely help us do that. The cooperation with B'Tselem stands out in particular. They help us speak to witness, to examine complaints. They do their job and I do mine. The interests are not identical, but with all the criticism of these organizations of us, their goal is to seek out the truth."

B'Tselem is motivated by a deep commitment to Israeli society, as well as a commitment to universal human rights principles. It strives for a future in which Israelis and Palestinians alike will live in freedom and dignity.

Two Palestinian organizations - al-Haq and al-Mezan - were similarly attacked in the Canadian press. B'Tselem also protested these attacks, citing the reputation both organizations have earned for their courageous work against human rights violations by Israeli as well as Palestinian authorities.

For further information contact:
Sarit Michaeli, Press Officer, at +972 (0)50-5387230 or saritm@btselem.org
Mitchell Plitnick, Director of US Communications mitchell@btselem.org Phone: +1-202-783-0629


Sarit Michaeli
Press Officer
B'Tselem
+972 (0) 73-2509305 (office)
+972 (0)50 5387230 (cell)
http://www.btselem.org/

Rights and Democracy: Beauregard speaks from the grave

More information is surfacing about the Rights and Democracy imbroglio. A memorandum from the late President, Rémy Beauregard, replying to a secret negative evaluation of his performance by three new Harper appointees, has found its way into the hands of Le Devoir, via Maclean's, where no story has appeared as yet. (Readers who have been following this saga will recall that Beauregard had to use Access to Information to obtain this evaluation.)

This follows hard on the heels of a fatuous claim by a certain Tim Mak, at David Frum's website, that Rights and Democracy had provided funds for the Durban II conference, dubbed by the writer an "Anti-Semitic Hate Fest." Paul Wells has had gorgeous fun with this, as have his commenters. It appears that the Harper government sent millions to the same place--the UN High Commission on Human Rights--and Rights and Democracy, unlike the government, had earmarked its funds to be spent elsewhere.

But Beauregard's memo indicates just how far things have gone downhill since Harper's new arrivals descended upon the Board. A few highlights, if they can be called that:

• Beauregard was accused by new Board members of meeting with representatives of Hamas and Hezbollah, a charge he indignantly denied:
  
  "Cela est absolument faux et je considère cette allégation comme une atteinte à ma réputation", réplique le principal intéressé. Il appert que M. Beauregard aurait plutôt fait une présentation générale à une délégation libanaise au sein de laquelle se trouvaient un ou des élus du Hezbollah.
  
  ["That is absolutely false and I consider this allegation an attack on my reputation," [Beauregard] replied. It appears that Beauregard had instead made a general presentation to a Lebanese delegation among whom one or more elected Hezbollah representatives were included.]
  
  
• He was also accused of having attended the Durban II conference, which he had not. He was then accused of failing to denounce the anti-Semitic remarks of Iran's president, at the conference he had not attended. As Beauregard put it:
  
  "Il aurait été incongru de faire une déclaration à propos d'une conférence à laquelle j'avais décidé, en tant que président, que notre institution ne participerait pas."
  
  ["It would be incongruous to make a declaration about a conference that I had decided, in my role as President, our organization would not participate in."]
  

• Then--and this is frankly bizarre--he was criticized in a follow-up memo by the now-President of Rights and Democracy, Jacques Gauthier, for having no Jewish employees:
  
  "J'ai été aussi très surpris d'être informé subséquemment qu'il n'y a aucun employé juif au bureau de Droits et démocratie de Montréal."
  
  ["I was also very surprised to be informed subsequently that there was not a single Jewish employee at the Montreal office of Rights and Democracy."]
  
  At that point, Beauregard let him have it:
  
  "Il est complètement inacceptable qu'un membre du conseil d'administration s'enquiert de l'ethnicité et/ou de l'appartenance religieuse des employés, en particulier dans une organisation des droits de la personne. Lorsque le syndicat apprendra cela et lorsque nous saurons comment M. Gauthier a enquêté sur les appartenances religieuses des employés, ce sera le bordel."
  
  ["It is completely unacceptable that a Board member inquires into the ethnic origins and/or the religion of employees, in particular in an organization that defends human rights. When the union learns about that, and when we know how M. Gauthier has been asking about the religion of our employees, there will be a bloody mess."]
  

We may have a clue as to why Maclean's has not, as of this writing, broken the story. It appears that Paul Wells has been threatened by Gauthier, and no doubt a team of lawyers is even now poring over his copy:

Ni M. Braun, ni M. Gauthier n'ont voulu répondre au magazine Maclean's. «Les hypothèses qui sous-tendent vos questions, répond Jacques Gauthier au journaliste Paul Wells, sont en très grande partie fausses, trompeuses, incomplètes et/ou déformées et je vous mets en garde de publier un article qui s'appuierait dessus.»

[Neither Mr. Braun [Auel Braun, the Chair of the Rights and Democracy Board] nor Mr. Gauthier wanted to respond to Maclean's magazine "The assumptions underlying your questions, " said Mr. Gauthier to Wells, "are in large part false, erroneous, incomplete and/or distorted and I would caution you about publishing an article based upon them."]

The whole affair appears headed for court after three senior managers were suspended and SIRCO, a private investigative firm specializing in infiltration, surveillance and computer forensics, was called in, according to inside sources, to help justify the suspensions. They have retained the services of the stellar Quebec advocate Julius Grey, so things could get very interesting indeed. Stay tuned and make plenty of popcorn.

[H/t ftbt, b/c]

UPDATE: (February 12) And here at last is Paul Wells.

[H/t reader POGGE]

Rights and Democracy: David Matas and the Christian connection

David Matas is a recent Harper appointment to the troubled Rights and Democracy Board. In the interests of fairness and transparency, Maclean's columnist Paul Wells reproduces a new communication from Matas, whose previous defence of the agency came to the public via far-right activist Ezra Levant.

One can't fault Matas for attempting to apply varnish to wood in the last stages of dry-rot. It's his job, as a Board member, to defend the current administration, and he does. Shorter Matas: move along, nothing to see here, it's the usual institutional jockeying between a staff and a Board. Policy isn't at issue, everyone's on-side, Israel has nothing to do with it.

The day before [the late President Remy] Beauregard died, the Board passed a motion repudiating the grants. The vote was nine in favour and one abstention. None opposed. Beauregard not only voted in favour of repudiation; he spoke for the motion saying “we could have done our homework better”. All that remained in dispute was the manner in which both sides had acted in resolving this policy disagreement.

Recall that this came after several months of browbeating by pro-Israel hawks on the Board, including its Chair, Aurel Braun. A negative evaluation of Beauregard by the Braun faction, then in a minority, was obtained by Beauregard through a Freedom of Information request and distributed at a Board meeting last June, causing no end of consternation to the folks who had thought they could undermine him in secret.

At the January meeting, Beauregard reached the end of his tether. The grants had been made, the money spent long ago, and what was at issue was administrative: new rules by which the President, already in the process of cleaning up management practices, could make discretionary expenditures.

To quote the Braun faction:

The freeze decision is meant to allow the staff time to complete a redesign of decision-making processes to help the organization avoid such situations in the future.

Reading between the lines, tighter administrative processes were continuing to be implemented, and the President went along. As to the "homework" that should have been better done, we have no idea of the full context of that remark. Perhaps it was a last-ditch effort to be conciliatory.

It was quite a gathering in January. Three grants to human rights groups in the Middle East were "repudiated," an international Board member was shown the door by the Braun Board, and two other Board members resigned on the spot. The battered President left the meeting, went home and died of a heart attack.

Matas couldn't confine himself to an administrative argument, in any case. Instead, he began a tirade about "anti-Conservative polemicists" who have allegedly "concocted facts."

...Haroon Siddiqui, in an opinion piece published in the Toronto Star, January 31, 2010 under the heading “How the Harperites ambushed the rights agency” wrote that the Board “voted 7-6 to repudiate the three grants”. A vote of 7 to 6 for repudiation sustained a story line that recent Tory appointees to the Board were bringing to the Board the Tory’s pro-Israel agenda. So that was the assertion, in spite of the fact that the vote was nine to none with one abstention.

Moreover, Siddiqui when he wrote about the 7-6 vote, knew it not to be true. I had written an analysis of the controversy in Rights and Democracy where I recounted the repudiation vote. In my analysis, I pointed out that the motion had passed handily and that Beauregard had voted in favour of the repudiation motion. I sent my analysis to Siddiqui by e-mail. He responded on January 27 by thanking me and indicating he had already read my analysis on a website.

Yet, four days later he wrote an opinion piece suggesting that the Board/staff dispute over the three grants remained alive and that the change in policy was the result of a Harper “hostile takeover” of the Board. Those imaginary facts fit better into the opinion he wanted to express than the real facts. So the imaginary facts prevailed.

7-6, 9-0. Matas' colleague Aurel Braun, meantime, says the vote was 8-0. Surely there are Minutes to put this matter to rest. In the meantime, Braun and Matas themselves disagree on the facts.

(I have contacted Rights and Democracy to obtain the coordinates of the person responsible for FOI requests so that I can initiate a request for the Minutes of the fateful January 7 meeting. Given the Centre's unwillingness or inability to respond to date, I would welcome any brown-paper envelopes that people might want to send my way.)

There is no reason, in any case, to quarrel with Siddiqui's assessment. To claim that policy isn't involved in the goings-on at Rights and Democracy stretches credulity. The staff has complained bitterly, not only about office administration (and even there, it is rare for an entire shop, maybe minus one or two people, to rise up in protest in this manner about merely administrative matters), but about outright racial profiling. Matas doesn't address this question, nor, whether the policy issue is allegedly settled or not, why the top echelon of management has just been suspended.

In a similar vein, Ish Theilheimer, at the website PublicValues.ca, wrote that the letter from the staff asking three Board members to resign was directed not to the leadership of the Board, but rather to a trio he characterized as recent political appointees – myself, Michael Van Pelt, and Jacques Gauthier. Yet, Jacques Gauthier was appointed to the Board two years ago.

Michael Van Pelt and I are the new appointees. The January Board meeting was our first. The staff did not ask us to resign. The Theilheimer commentary which criticized the Harper government for using the appointments process to pursue an ultra conservative agenda both quoted and had a link to an article by Maclean’s reporter Paul Wells. That Wells article stated correctly who the three targeted Board members were.

So again here we have an imaginary fact, which the writer knew to be false, being using to buttress an opinion which the real facts could not sustain. The suggestion of a hostile political takeover is more compelling if the staff resignation demand is directed to the new members. The narrative Theilheimer wanted to build is that the staff today still support funding for the three organizations but the Government does not; so the Government appointed people to reverse the funding policy.

This is an amazing display of disingenuousness. Let's deconstruct:

First, the three people named in the staff letter were Braun, Gauthier and Elliot Tepper. It's entirely fair to point that out (and Theilheimer provided the link) but it shouldn't be conflated with the larger narrative: a minority, hawkishly pro-Israel faction had been increasing its numbers on the Board thanks to recent Harper appointments, and the arrival of Matas and Michael Van Pelt gave Aurel Braun the majority he had been looking for. The majority flexed its muscles this January: the scheduled October meeting of the Board had been cancelled by Braun, likely to allow the majority to be created.

Let's not play semantic games about Van Pelt, either. If "evangelist" is not precise, "fundamentalist Christian" would fit more exactly. And then there is Jacques Gauthier, with his PhD thesis effectively supporting the confiscation of East Jerusalem by Israel: thanks to the Braun Board, he's now the interim President of Rights and Democracy.

Agenda? What agenda? asks Matas, with wide-eyed innocence. Nobody told him what to do. Sure, he's a lawyer for B'nai Brith, but he's a Liberal. But he doesn't mention the fact that the extremist pro-Israel stance of B'nai Brith has been adopted, holus-bolus, by the Conservative government. Whether he's holding his nose or not, Matas is completely on-side. His enemy's enemy, the Harper government, is presently his friend.

And of course no official comment from the current Rights and Democracy Board majority would be complete without the obligatory smear:

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Al Haq, Al Mezan and B’Tselem have gained a reputation for their method of operation – develop a theory first, in their case “Israel is to blame” and then twist or invent the facts to fit the theory. The current round of polemicist attacks on the Tories seems inspired by this method of operation. If the facts cannot sustain their theory – a Conservative party hostile takeover of Rights and Democracy to pursue a right wing ideological agenda – then the facts must be changed to fit the theory.

Whatever, David. But there's a backstory developing that may have some bearing on the situation.

Michael D. Behiels, of the Department of History at the University of Ottawa, has claimed that the government, in what looks like a wrecking operation at Rights and Democracy, is simply "pandering to B'nai Brith." He's right, but there's more to it than that. The Centre, in fact, appears to be a casualty of the alliance of B'nai Brith's Israel-can-do-no-wrongers and the fundamentalist Christian Right.

In broad strokes, the nature of that alliance is sketched out here. It goes well beyond Canadian borders, of course. It occupies a twilight space in which Jews who do not toe the line are maniacally denounced as evil traitors, while Christian evangelists seeking the proper unfolding of Biblical prophecy, and who inconveniently believe that Jews will meet their deserved end during the Rapture, are Israel's current BFFs.

Now, B'nai Brith Canada has been having its own factional dispute going on for several years, and this has just culminated in a lawsuit by nine former members of the organization this past January 20.

These nine members were expelled from the organization in 2008. They include past BB national presidents, and 93-year-old Lou Ronson, the longest-living member of B'nai Brith up to that time, who received his expulsion notice while he was mourning the recent death of his wife. They are suing for $990,000 in damages and reinstatement. As reported in the Canadian Jewish News:

The case arises out of a dispute between several longstanding senior members of the organization – who were expelled – and the organization’s leadership over a number of alleged irregularities. The former members contend that B’nai Brith directors have wrested control of the organization from its members, who are organized in lodges, and that B’nai Brith “has used tactics amounting to intimidation” to silence opposition.

--

The plaintiffs were expelled from B’nai Brith after a disciplinary committee hearing in January 2008 for "conduct unbecoming a member." The plaintiffs ...allege the disciplinary committee hearing was fraught with legal and procedural errors "such that the plaintiffs were thereby denied a fair hearing conducted in accordance with the principles of natural justice."

They say they were never informed who laid the complaint against them or what specific conduct merited expulsion. As well, they say they weren't permitted to cross-examine their accusers, they weren't allowed to present submissions on their own behalf, and that the hearing was adjourned with a request for disclosure of documents still pending.

"The plaintiffs state and the fact is that the directors of the BBC have effectively taken control of the organization from its membership, and in part by way of the taking of such control, failed to provide details of contracts involving themselves and other associated bodies of which they have direction."

--

The defence acknowledges that "many of the plaintiffs were longstanding members of BBC and BBI. However, the plaintiffs’ tenure and past accomplishments did not insulate them from subsequently engaging in conduct unbecoming a member of these organizations."

What's up? Just a common-or-garden institutional struggle, much like the one at Right and Democracy, as Matas is attempting to portray it?

Well, no. The B'nai Brith fracas, as it turns out, is about policy, too--policy that has a direct bearing upon the politics presently at play at Rights and Democracy.

Stephen Scheinberg is a former senior B'nai Brith official. He and Aurel Braun--small world--were co-authors of a book about the far right, but that was then (1997) and this is now.

Factional fighting within the upper echelons of B'nai Brith broke out in 2007. Part of it had to do with how the organization was being run, and part of it arose from the close ties its President, Frank Dimant, was attempting to build with the Conservative party.

In the Fall of that year, Scheinberg broke with the organization and published an article entitled "Partners for Imperium: B’nai Brith Canada and the Christian Right" (HTML version here).

Scheinberg contends that the struggle within B'nai Brith was not ideological, and he also tries to distance Stephen Harper from the religious fundamentalism addressed in his article, fingering Jason Kenney as the PM's point man in that respect.

But readers may wish to draw their own conclusions from the contents of his piece. Here are some excerpts, with emphases added:

Presiding over B'nai Brith’s declining fortunes since 1978 has been Executive Vice-President Frank Dimant, the son of Holocaust survivors who was born in Munich just after the war. Dimant matured within Montreal's Betar, the extreme right-wing Jewish youth group associated with the Revisionist-Zionist movement of Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin. Revisionism advocated an Israel on both sides of the Jordan (that is, including much of today’s Jordan).

Dimant took his present position thirty years ago, an extremely long tenure in such a position but testifying to his skill at wielding power. He distributes offices and awards, and even helps his loyal followers gain places in B’nai Brith International, organizes meetings with government officials, and also has ties to the Conservative Party, which could help secure a nomination for parliament. At least two of his followers, to my knowledge, have nominations for the next election.

In the 1980s, when I first came to BBC, attracted by its work for human rights, it was a pluralistic organization. Around the League for Human Rights table I found mostly liberals—a few, such as myself, with more activist backgrounds—and a sprinkling of conservatives. Most of the conservatives were part of the other side of BBC political work, the Institute for International Affairs, and since most of that group’s work was Israel advocacy, it was where Dimant’s own Betar views predominated. I think many, like myself, in the League accepted this, believing that the Institute was Frank Dimant’s small corner of B’nai Brith, but unfortunately that corner has become what today’s B’nai Brith is all about.

This state of pluralism in B’nai Brith lasted until about five years ago. It has now been totally eliminated with the expulsion of eight dissenting members. At a rump national board meeting, with a bare quorum, Dimant introduced a resolution to forge an alliance with the Christian right in Canada. Knowing something of their American counterparts, I challenged the motion, but was the only one to do so. I turned to well-known Liberal human rights lawyer David Matas of Winnipeg, but he was not similarly alarmed, perhaps because his own unabashedly pro-Israel position was consistent with such an alliance, or perhaps he did not share my fears. Dimant and others tried to assure me that the alliance was only for Israel advocacy. [emphasis added]

I soon learned that was not the case. One day I received a phone call from NDP MP Svend Robinson, inviting me as Chair of the League for Human Rights to come to Ottawa to testify in favour of his bill to include gays and lesbians among those protected from hate speech. I readily agreed, because it had always been BBC policy to support their inclusion, but I was in for a surprise. It was clear that the main group opposed to Robinson’s bill was the Christian right, and that BBC, that is Mr. Dimant, would not support the bill without protection being given to the speech of anti-gay clergy. I, though much embarrassed, had to notify Robinson that I was unable to appear at the hearings as a representative of BBC. It would have been a good time to resign, but perhaps mistakenly, I hung in.

Meanwhile, Dimant received a honourary doctorate from the Canada Christian College, but unlike most recipients of such degrees, he often uses the title "Dr." Joint tours of Israel, exchanges of speakers and of course mutual support of the Conservative Party have furthered the linkage. The anti-gay, anti-feminist, pro-censorship stance of Reverend Charles McVety of the Canada Christian College did not seem to bother Dimant, who heads a League for Human Rights.

[That name! Where have I heard it before? --ed.]

A key person in furthering the alliance was Joseph Ben-Ami, a bearded, pleasant individual and an Orthodox Jew who took on the role of BBC’s government affairs representative in Ottawa. He had worked previously for Stephen Harper and then for Stockwell Day as a policy aide, and played a leading role in Day’s leadership campaign. I believe that Ben-Ami was central to the effort to build this alliance. He would go on to work for two of the numerous front organizations established by Rev. McVety—the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies and the Institute for Canadian Values. McVety seems to believe that his multiple groups will further the belief in the power and influence of the Christian right here in Canada. According to a 2006 article in Walrus, McVety’s Institute was established as “a direct riposte to bill C-38” which legalized same-sex marriage.

In any event, McVety and some of his pastoral colleagues, especially Reverends John Tweedie and Dean Bye, became favoured speakers at BBC events. They helped create the illusion that, at long last, Canadian churches were giving their unconditional support to Israel.

That would seem to connect most of the dots. The writing is on the wall, I think, for Rights and Democracy.

UPDATE: The redoubtable Paul Wells weighs in. Chomp!

Rights and Democracy: everybody's out of step but the Magnificent Seven [Updated]

The late President. The employees. Grant recipients. "Outsiders who willingly propagate convenient fantasies for their own ends."

Yet another op-ed from the Magnificent Seven. Do these people have any notion of how weak and self-serving their by-now stale protestations appear?

That's a rhetorical question.

Once again, the name of former President Rémy Beauregard is dragged through the mud:

Both before and after its compulsory submission of the review to government, the board's evaluation committee (the same three members whose resignation is being demanded) repeatedly offered to meet with the former president to discuss the evaluation. Regrettably, he rejected that option, rejected the review of his leadership, and launched an intensive campaign to overturn it.

It was his right to object, and to counter with his own report. But instead, he turned to his senior managers, and they in turn involved their subordinate staff to combat what the president claimed was a grievous wrong.

Charitably, this can be seen as a misjudgment arising from emotion, one that could have been rectified had outside actors with their own agendas not seized what they saw as a prime propaganda opportunity. [emphases added]

This is beyond foul. As I have noted before--and indeed, rather than repeat myself on every point, I direct readers' attention to that review of the Magnificent Seven's previous flim-flammery, tiresomely recycled in this new broadside--Beauregard was indeed willing to meet, but the evaluation committee couldn't seem to find a convenient time. In the event, Beauregard never did see his evaluation until he pried it from his tormentors' hands with an Access to Information request. And your tax dollars and mine were used to hire expensive legal help to (unsuccessfully) contest that request.

Nor did "outsider actors" with or without their own agendas even get involved in this mess until Beauregard was dead. Meanwhile the staff were being ethnically profiled by Magnificent Seven member Jacques Gauthier. They complained in an all-but-unanimous letter on January 11 that intimidation and harassment at work were the order of the day. It was at that point that people like myself started to notice this little agency in Montreal and the bizarre goings-on there.

But the disingenuousness continues, without let-up. "There is no credible evidence of any attempt to politically interfere" with the Board, quoth the Seven, but it was the very fact of their appointments in the first place that constituted what many observers consider to be interference. Nor should we be lulled by their oh-so-innocent claims that none of them "had any discernible partisan background," or that there was no "Israel issue" at Rights and Democracy.

As I commented earlier:

Middle East politics...have been foregrounded at ICHRDD for months. The new Board appointees include two active members of B'nai Brith (Braun and David Matas). Jacques Gauthier wrote a PhD thesis defending the annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel. The Board also has a couple of Conservative Party trained seals (failed CPC candidate Brad Farquhar and Marco Navarro-Génie, who did his thesis work at the University of Calgary under Tom Flanagan), and a business-oriented Christian think-tanker, Michael Van Pelt.

And then, once again: "Accountability is the issue that should be the sole rallying point at Rights and Democracy."

Uh-huh. At the Board's meeting this week, the Seven, who have the votes, will be making by-law changes that will concentrate more power in the hands of the President, including unfettered contracting rights without tender. This might provide some retroactive justification, of course, for the recent rash of hirings at Rights and Democracy: private detectives, forensic auditors, outside communications people--even though R&D has a communications section--and a CEO. Four staff members considered all this to be outside established procedures, and brought it to the forensic auditors' attention. The four were promptly handed suspensions.

Feh.

The Magnificent Seven say they would welcome a public inquiry. Bring it on. And in the meantime, let the widow speak.

UPDATE: Conservative shill Senator Linda Frum weighs in--what a remarkable coincidence of timing. And Paul Wells responds.

Here is Linda, and her warmed-over talking points (emphases added):

Anyone who has ever served on a board knows that such inquiries on the part of a board chair and the audit and finance committee are necessary in order to fulfill the duty of “due diligence.” But to the managers of R and D—unaccustomed to any challenge to their authority and hostile to investigations into their pet projects—the board’s interest was deemed “harassment” and requests for “sensitive” information were rejected or stonewalled.

It would be interesting to have her evidence for this. She's only an "outsider with an agenda," after all. Why do I suspect that she's simply channeling Aurel Braun? It's worth pointing out--yet again--that virtually every member of the R&D staff, not solely management, signed a letter complaining of harassment and intimidation.

To this day, management refuses to co-operate fully with an audit being conducted by the respected firm of Deloitte & Touche. Instead, they have launched a self-righteous campaign of media sniping and obfuscation—aided by the disappearance of managerial laptops and computer records.

As noted earlier, four employees who did provide information to the auditors were promptly punished. And the suggestion that staff had anything to do with the theft of laptop computers and records is simply unconscionable.

The sudden death in January of Remy Beauregard has injected an element of sorrow to the situation, but it does not alter a public body’s duty to account for public money. By January 2010, even Beauregard finally came to the conclusion that giving money to Al Haq (and like organizations) was wrong and voted to repudiate it. But the staff he left behind remain resentful of the board’s scrutiny.

Not so. The money was long gone, the "repudiation" but a gesture. Beauregard voted with the majority because, I am reliably informed, he simply wanted peace.

The R and D staff’s anger at the board’s curiosity suggests that something has gone very wrong at R and D.

Or that anger might suggest that there's a serious problem with the Board. Is ethnic profiling a bona fide management technique?

On March 29, Gerard Latulippe, an experienced administrative law and labour lawyer with professional expertise in promoting democratic accountability in the third world (most recently in Haiti), will take over as Rights and Democracy’s new president.

What--no mention of his opposition to gay rights and his Islamophobia? Is he really a suitable President for an organization whose mandate is to promote human rights? What about a little "democratic accountability" right here at home?

He has the tough task of reforming an agency gone rogue long ago.

What utter rot. As has been pointed out almost from the start, R&D had been subject to annual audits and a five-year audit by Foreign Affairs--and passed with flying colours. Did Frum's informants fail to mention that?

Yes, some of the staff are complaining anonymously to the press. But the complaints do not prove them right. On the contrary, their complaints prove how very deep the problems go.

Oh, indeed they do, Linda, indeed they do.

So much for déjà vu all over again. Now Paul:

Elsewhere in today’s news, the Braun Seven majority on the board of Rights and Democracy has published another in their series of occasional op-eds wondering why the world is so mean to them. “We call upon Parliament to hold public hearings so that facts can replace fantasies, and we can move ahead,” they write.

Here’s a fact: after first confirming he would appear tomorrow before the foreign-affairs committee of Parliament, Braun has now sent word that he’s too busy to show up.

Well, read the whole article for yourselves. And pay careful attention to this:

A month ago they hired Deloitte to do an audit of the company’s books over a carefully-selected date span. “Results will be made public as soon as possible after the report is accepted by the board of directors,” Gauthier said in the press release sent out by a communications firm he hired without tender outside the target period of the Deloitte audit.

Excellent. Good. Fine. Great. The Deloitte audit was going to take three weeks. That was four weeks ago. When will Braun and Gauthier table the audit — along with the terms of reference and the details of the consulting contracts Gauthier has entered into, on Rights and Democracy’s behalf, since February?

Since nobody has anything to hide.

Ouch. That's gotta leave a mark.


[H/t Ti-Guy]

Rights and Democracy: Board member's head explodes

One of the Braun Gang lets loose. One doesn't know whether to laugh out loud or weep at this warmed-over hackery, and its tone of shrill defensiveness. Paul Wells juxtaposes.

Marco Navarro-Génie is no disinterested observer, not that you'd imagine that for a moment reading his frothy little rant. He did his thesis work at the University of Calgary--under former Harper Chief of Staff Tom Flanagan.

It's not worth refuting his many inaccuracies and falsehoods. But this is typical:

The board of directors has made clear that there never was an ‘Israel issue' at Rights and Democracy. The only issue was the board's discovery that Canadian tax dollars were going to organizations whose leaders would not be allowed into Canada. Indeed, the government of Jordan would not give one of these recipients an exit visa.

Er, no Marco, that was Shawan Jabarin, who wanted to travel to the Netherlands to pick up a human rights award. He was denied an exit visa from the West Bank by the government of Israel. And if you're referring to Al-Haq, Al-Mezen and B'Tselem, the first has been funded by CIDA, and Foreign Affairs oversaw the Rights and Democracy grant to it. B'Tselem is an Israeli human rights organization, which, despite the bizarre calumnies of your Chair, is well-respected inside and outside Israel.

Go read. This is what's running Rights and Democracy at the moment. Good grief.

The three fired managers of Rights and Democracy, and the brave PSAC Local president Maxime Longangué and vice-president Micheline Levesque, were in front of the Parliamentary committee today, and Kady O'Malley has the details.

UPDATE: Paul Wells has more. A glimpse, from one perspective, of a year in the life of Rights and Democracy.

Fire. Them. All.

Or most of them, anyway.

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs has issued its report on the clowncar brigade formerly known as the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, or, more familiarly, as Rights and Democracy.

Regular readers here will find confirmed in the report what I and others have been maintaining all along: it's a dreary tale of administrative incompetence, questionable contracting procedures, and sleazy, ideologically-motivated administrative misbehaviour.

Some of the recommendations give the flavour of the findings:

Recommendation 4:
The Committee recommends that the Government of Canada strongly encourage The Board of Directors of Rights and Democracy to amend its by-laws so that all contracts above $10,000 in value are automatically subject to calls for tender.

Recommendation 5:
The Committee also recommends that the Government of Canada strongly encourage Rights and Democracy to publish all contracts greater than $2,000 on its public website.

Recommendation 9:
That the Privy Council Office remove the Board’s evaluation (and all documents related to the evaluation) of Rémy Beauregard [former Rights and Democracy President, hounded to his death] from all files.

Recommendation 10:
That the current Board of Rights and Democracy issue an apology to
Mr. Beauregard's family for any statements damaging his reputation.

Recommendation 11:
That the Government of Canada reconstitute the Board, with a new
Chair.

Recommendation 12:
That the Government of Canada authorize the new Board to review the
appointment of Mr. Latulippe.

Almost needless to say, the "Conservative Party of Canada" issued a dissenting report, ending, not with a bang, but a whimper:

While we worked diligently with opposition members to agree on the body of this report, we cannot support ALL the recommendations pushed through by the opposition majority on the Committee.

We are not told which recommendations they agree with and which they don't. That will allow Stephen Harper maximum latitude, of course, to ignore everything that the Committee has had to say. And former human rights advocate Michael Ignatieff will be unavailable for comment.

[H/t readers in the comments and b/c]

Rights and Democracy: Wells running dry

Paul Wells, the senior Maclean's columnist who has been doing most of the heavy lifting on the Rights and Democracy mess, is burning out:

I am going to very substantially scale back my writing about this issue. I have reached the point where I am wasting my breath. My consolation is that many tens of thousands of Canadians now see this charade for what it is; that this has turned into a very, very bad day at the office for all concerned, including a few strategic geniuses who thought they could narrow-cast their way to electoral gain while the rest of the country missed this story; and that I have managed to shine a bit of a light on some of the most squalid behaviour I have ever witnessed in 20 years as a reporter. I am so grateful to Maclean’s readers for following the details of this often-complex story.

But if he is indeed exiting, it's with a bang, not a whimper.

To put his for-now closing remarks in context, you need to read the Magnificent Seven's second salvo of self-justification in the National Post on Tuesday. It is so transparently false, so disingenuous, so jam-packed with falsehoods and innuendo, that Wells loses his cool altogether.

"It's not about the Middle East" is the staggeringly disingenuous lede, and it's all downhill from there. The Braun Bunch score several own-goals, besmirching the memory of the late President, Rémy Beauregard, mauling their own management team, and taking a kick or two at their staff.

"[T]he real story here is a board doing its duty," they claim.

We on the board found the problems; we did not create them. The current “crisis” has been produced by a staff misled by its leadership and prone to periodic eruptions.

Everyone's out of step but the Seven. We get a "politics, shmolitics" defensive line that one might sum up as "yes we have no agenda." It's all about transparency and accountability, they say. One can almost hear them whistling innocently--in unison.

But it quickly emerges that the late Beauregard is the reason for writing the piece. He's in no position to fight back, of course. I had always thought there was a law against offering indignities to a corpse, but the Seven seem to have little compunction in that regard.

Readers will recall that a central aspect of this bordel was the preparation of a negative evaluation by three Board members, constituted as an executive review committee. Beauregard was forced to use Access to Information to see it.

Secret evaluation? What secret evaluation? ask the Seven, wide-eyed. Beauregard had plenty of chances to meet with Chairman Aurel Braun, Elliott Tepper and Jacques Gauthier, who had prepared the report, they say. "He chose not to avail himself of those opportunities."

And this is simply breathtaking:

The former president rejected the criticism of his presidency found in the presidential performance report. That was not surprising. But his response was misguided: He tried to mobilize the staff and board to counter it. Even informing the staff of the contents of his personnel report was a gross violation, given his authority as their superior. In any case, the performance review report was advisory only and not constitutive. The review was advice to the Privy Council which the Privy Council could accept or reject as it saw fit. Instead of rallying the troops internally to support him, the former president could have just written to the Privy Council, expressing his disagreement with the review and asking the Privy Council to ignore it, which it was free to do. He did not take that path.

Read that paragraph carefully. The glaring absence of a timeline is telling. In fact the impression is given, to readers unfamiliar with the controversy, that the President had the evaluation in his hands and chose to inflame his employees rather than write a rebuttal. The President, we are told, could have written to the Privy Council but "did not take that path." What we are not told is that he had to spend months to obtain the evaluation, while his efforts were vigorously countered, at considerable expense, by the Braun faction.

Then the Seven unleash a volley of accusations against all and sundry:

Senior managers failed to protect the former president from damaging behaviour over a personnel dispute with the board, and failed to protect their staff from the distortions, disruptions, insubordination and poisoning of the atmosphere which ensued, and which were amplified when the former president died. CEOs and senior managers in Canada are not entitled to pressure boards over personnel matters, nor abuse their authority over subordinates, nor declare independence from the board of directors. Staff cannot use tax dollars without oversight. This organization cannot engage in politics at home instead of doing its job of promoting human rights overseas. [emphases added]

The Seven don't merely smear--they bring out the ol' super-soaker and go after the entire organization they're supposed to be managing. That should promote harmony and a healthy, well-functioning workplace.

In the midst of their thrashing and flailing, they manage a now-obligatory shot at the three Middle East human rights organizations that are, pace the Seven, at the centre of all this: B'Tselem, Al-Haq and Al-Mezan, referred to as "suspect organizations." And critics like Paul Wells and maybe even myself, are dismissed as "conflict entrepreneurs." I shall have that one framed.

As noted, Wells is nearly undone, calling this outrageous bit of rhetorical flim-flam a "display of bulbous rubber noses and floppy shoes from the seven clowns running Rights and Democracy." And that's just for starters.

The charge that the late President could have met with his three evaluators at any time? Turns out that the beleaguered Beauregard addressed that very point in a letter on October 26:

“With respect to the efforts made to accommodate the President for a meeting of the [executive review] Committee,” he wrote, “it is important to clarify that of the 55 days proposed by the Secretary of the Board for such a meeting, the President indicated he was available for 45 of those days.”

Why then no meeting? Wells asks. Well, the Committee never could find a day when the three of them could get together.

What about the organizational running of Rights and Democracy? The Seven keep referring to a critical evaluation by Foreign Affairs in 2007, but, as Wells points out, they keep ignoring altogether DFAIT's positive final evaluation a year later that capped a five-year audit of the Centre.

Here's the exasperated Wells on the Seven's persistent misinformation about this matter:

I’ve written [about] that a half-dozen times here, and I know for a fact that the Braun Circus has many friends who read this blog closely now as part of their work day. I repeated it on TVO’s The Agenda With Steve Paikin on Friday night. And still this bunch refuses to ever mention the 2008 evaluation, and still this bunch claims the problems “regrettably remain,” and still this bunch hauls in an audit firm with a vague mandate which their own public statements define in contradictory ways. The staff is terrified that their due-process rights will be run roughshod. Who can blame them? Ask Rémy Beauregard. Oh, that’s right. He’s dead.

Although I would regret not seeing more of Wells on this issue--I hope that he might soon change his mind--I can hardly blame him for being tired and frustrated as the slimy alibis and attacks continue unchecked, with government connivance. Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon has defended the interim President's pointless forensic audit, and tapped as the new President a man with decided views on Muslims and immigration that, to be charitable, have little to do with human rights. What was once an admired organization with an international reputation continues its downhill slide, and there is an awful air of inevitability about it.

As someone with a long and abiding interest in governance, I might agree that we should try to leave our entrenched positions on Middle East affairs at the door and look at the current antics at Rights and Democracy simply as a model of how not to manage an institution. But it's hard to ignore the Middle Eastern elephant in the room, frightening the hired help and bothering the guests. To pretend that there's no such animal, as the Seven do with an utterly unconvincing look of injured innocence, is frankly an insult to our intelligence. And to carry on in this fashion, as we have every indication they will, sullies the very notion of human rights that the Centre was intended to promote.

[For those who want background and personalities, be sure to watch the entire 36-minute clip from The Agenda up at Well's place. And why not send Paul a warm word or two?]

Rights and Democracy: widow stonewalled by Cons

The Conservative members of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade are none too happy that the widow of former Rights and Democracy President Rémy Beauregard wants to appear before the Committee. Here is her letter, in full:

Mr. Allison, President:
Members of the Committee:

I am writing to you to request to appear before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development with respect to the Rights & Democracy's hearing. I am presenting this request as the wife of Remy M. Beauregard, President of the organization until his sudden death which happened last January 8th.

The three dismissed managers, Marie-France Cloutier, Razmik Panossian and Charles Vallerand, as well as former board director Payam Akhavan, who resigned on last January 7th, have also requested to appear before the Committee, and I would like to be able to do so at the same time.

Considering the events I witnessed during the months preceding and following my husband's death, I think it is important that I can be heard, particularly to clear my husband's name in order to remove from the Privy Council Office all the documents regarding his evaluation that are still in his file.

The allegations and comments, particularly those on his evaluation, have contributed to strongly affect his health. Since March 2009, my husband was constantly exposed to a lot of pressure from certain board directors, who seemed to have doubt in his management ability, and who interfered within his functions as President and chief executive officer of the organization, which exceeds their role as board directors.

This hearing will finally give me the opportunity to express myself, in spite of my sorrow and grief, on a situation that has been lasting for months, and which has profoundly damaged the perception on the Canadian actions with respect to human rights and democracy, at the national and international levels.

I thank you in advance for your attention to my request, and I remain,

Yours sincerely,

Suzanne R. Trepanier

The Cons' response was to filibuster. What are they afraid of?

Meanwhile, embattled Rights and Democracy Board chair Aurel Braun has condescended to spend an hour with the Committee next Tuesday. Board member Jacques Gauthier, who served as interim President after Beauregard's death, has not yet confirmed. And on March 30, the frankly Islamophobic new President, Gérard Latulippe, will grace the Committee with his presence. I hope Committee members ask about his opposition to gay rights, as well, but don't expect those members to be Conservatives.

Rights and Democracy, and the Canada-Colombia FTA

The Canada-Colombia how-much-for-the-little-girl? Free Trade Investment Agreement, aka Bill C2, will pass third reading later today just as Martha Hall Findlay begins to get the feeling back in her lower jaw.

Last fall, the parliamentary Trade Committee recommendations on C-23 as it was then known - including one for an independent human rights assessment before the deal passed - was considered vital to obtaining opposition support. This year the Libs don't much care for it, having jettisoned it in favour of Lib Scott Brison's preference for hearing about human rights abuses after they occur.

From 2007 through 2009, C-23 Recommendation #4 read:

"... that an independent, impartial, and comprehensive human rights impact assessment should be carried out by a competent body, which is subject to levels of independent scrutiny and validation; the recommendations of this assessment should be addressed before Canada considers signing, ratifying and implementing an agreement with Colombia."

And who was to do this human rights assessment?

"The Committee recommends that the Government of Canada draw on the work of the organization Rights and Democracy to give an independent body the mandate to conduct studies regarding the impact on rights and the environment when it is negotiating economic agreements with countries at risk, as in the case of the agreement with Colombia."

And look what happened to them.
They got a new chairman, a new president, four new board members, and a new mandate at the bottom of Steve's sock drawer.

What sort of work might R&D have recommended on a potential trade agreement with Colombia if they weren't in Steve's sock drawer?

R&D Feb. 1, 2007 :

"Colombian paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso’s recent admission that he facilitated the disappearance and killing of celebrated indigenous leader Kimy Pernia Domico, winner of Rights & Democracy’s 2003 John Humphrey Freedom Award, raises new concerns that justice for victims of human rights abuses will not be served by Colombia’s current demobilization process."

R&D goes on to note that Kimy Pernia Domico had come to Canada years before to give testimony to Members of Parliament about :

"the devastating effects of an internationally-funded hydroelectric dam on the Embera-Katio’s traditional lands and livelihoods, a project which received $18.2-million in funding from Export Development Canada."

And then they ask a lot of awkward questions.
Say, how did that work out?

Land and Life, a 2007 doc film from Kathy Price, former CBC foreign affairs producer :

"examines the devastating impact of a hydroelectric project on the Embera Katío Indigenous people and raises disturbing questions about a Canadian crown corporation that provided financing."

Was the gutting of Rights and Democracy only about protecting Israel from criticism?
Perhaps not entirely.
Perhaps Steve thought the addition of a few new board members last year would be all that was needed to facilitate some really enthusiastic reports on Colombia's remarkable progress in reducing poverty by 1% per year while simultaneously increasing the gap between rich and poor for the benefit of whichever oil or mining project we are funding there this week.

Of course that's Scott Brison's job now.

Rights and Democracy: Church and State

The troubled International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (ICHRDD), familiarly known as Rights and Democracy, is a microcosm of a cultural and political struggle playing itself out in Canada today: progressive values versus a combination of far-right ideology, extremist theology and Middle East politics.

That's an explosive mix. It's blowing ICHRDD apart as I write this. Readers are probably aware by now that Stephen Harper's new appointees to the Board have a clear ideological mission: to exempt Israel from human rights scrutiny. To that end, small grants to three respected human rights organizations in the Middle East--Al-Haq, Al-Mezan and B'Tselem--were "repudiated" this past January. They have since been slandered by the Chair of the ICHRDD Board, Aurel Braun, who called B'Tselem (an Israel-based group that has been praised even by the Israeli Attorney-General) "toxic" and "Israeli in name only."

But as we now know, Braun's Gleichschaltung went much further than that. Internally, the now-late president of the organization, Rémy Beauregard, was subjected to gross mistreatment, including gratuitous slander. Employees have been terrorized, to the point that all but one or two of the staff wrote an open letter demanding that three new Board members, Braun, Jacques Gauthier and Elliott Tepper, be removed.

The staff complained of psychological harassment, intimidation and ethnic profiling--the latter confirmed, it appears, by interim president Jacques Gauthier. A gag order has been placed on all employees, three top managers have been suspended pour encourager les autres, and a horde of what Maclean's commentator Paul Wells calls "freelancers" have been brought in, including a private investigator (Claude Sarrazin), forensic auditors, a new office manager (Charles Auger) and now a new communications director--Peter Stockland.

More on Stockland in a minute.

Braun has not been content to focus on Middle East matters. As Chair of the Board of a supposedly independent agency, he has been unusually protective of the current government. He went so far as to administer a tongue-lashing last year to the late president and to senior manager Razmik Panossian (now suspended). Their sin? They had publicly pointed out that Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, despite his denial, had been informed months in advance of Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai's plans to legalize marital rape. He was apparently mortified that the Minister--with that ever-convenient memory of his--was being contradicted.

But Middle East politics, nevertheless, have been foregrounded at ICHRDD for months. The new Board appointees include two active members of B'nai Brith (Braun and David Matas). Jacques Gauthier wrote a PhD thesis defending the annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel. The Board also has a couple of Conservative Party trained seals (failed CPC candidate Brad Farquhar and Marco Navarro-Génie, who did his thesis work at the University of Calgary under Tom Flanagan), and a business-oriented Christian think-tanker, Michael Van Pelt.

In this affair, some of the dots connect themselves. The involvement of veteran pro-Israel propagandist Gerald Steinberg is probably worth its own story. But let's step back and look at the wider picture. The ICHRDD imbroglio, in fact, has much to do with a troubling convergence of church and state in Stephen Harper's Canada.

Canada has no constitutional separation of church and state. The "Establishment Clause" is part of the First Amendment to the US constitution, but far too many Canadians believe we have something similar.

We don't, and it's beginning to show. The Harper government, for example, has just awarded a $3.2 million grant to the evangelical organization Youth for Christ. (As NDP critic Pat Martin quipped, what if the outfit had been called Youth for Allah? He was promptly scolded for his opposition by that moral paragon, Public Safety Minister Victor Toews.)

Our Prime Minister is an evangelical Christian, a member of a denomination that believes Christ's return to earth is imminent. He has called criticism of Israel "anti-Semitic" and suggested that some Members of Parliament were akin to Nazis. Jason Kenney, no slouch in the religion department either, is perhaps even more zealous on the subject of Israel.

Where does this inflexible stance come from?

There is, in fact, a theological explanation for the solidarity now being shown by right-wing pro-Israel Christians. Put simply, Israel must persist because the Bible says it must--until the Second Coming of Christ and the Rapture (watch this clip to get the flavour).

So the anti-Semitism of evangelical Christians and Catholic demagogues in bygone days has been replaced? Hold on. Not so fast.

The Rapture--the bodily taking up of the faithful into heaven when the world ends--will only be available for Jews who convert to Christianity, "perfected Jews" in far-right commentator Ann Coulter's parlance. The rest will be incinerated.

The state of Israel, then, not the Jews, is the focus of so-called "Christian Zionism." If the difference is obscure for some, the evangelicals are quite clear on that point. And so are disillusioned Jews like Stephen Scheinberg, who watched B'nai Brith Canada lurch into the arms of the Christian Right:

[A] state of pluralism in B’nai Brith lasted until about five years ago. (It has now been totally eliminated with the expulsion of eight dissenting members...) At a rump national board meeting, with a bare quorum, Dimant introduced a resolution to forge an alliance with the Christian right in Canada. Knowing something of their American counterparts, I challenged the motion, but was the only one to do so. I turned to well-known Liberal human rights lawyer David Matas of Winnipeg, but he was not similarly alarmed, perhaps because his own unabashedly pro-Israel position was consistent with such an alliance, or perhaps he did not share my fears. [B'nai Brith president Frank]Dimant and others tried to assure me that the alliance was only for Israel advocacy.

I soon learned that was not the case.

(Scheinberg and ICHRDD Chair Aurel Braun--small world--once co-authored a book on the far Right. Those were the days.)

What in fact is emerging in the US and in Canada is a politico-religious alliance of what once upon a time might have been considered strange bedfellows indeed: conservative Jews, ultra-Christians and the extreme Right. The Christians are, to varying degrees, Dominionists, who want the state to govern according to the Law of God. And, in a further shifting of alliances, zealous Catholics like Jason Kenney have taken their places alongside the evangelicals.

Stephen Harper's personal commitment to Dominionist notions is hardly a secret (the linked article is long, but well worth reading). And he has a powerful ally in "Doctor" Charles McVety, a Christian extremist who holds undue and unelected sway over the policies of the Harper government.

All of these elements and alliances have been brought to the fore by the civil war raging in ICHRDD. The Conservative government, a forgetful Minister of Foreign Affairs, B'nai Brith and various enthusiastic pro-Israel Christians are ranged against those who take universal human rights seriously (almost the entire staff of Rights and Democracy, for starters)--those, in other words, who think that even Palestinians have rights worthy of protection.

It should be no surprise, then, that the interim president of ICHRDD has now appointed Peter Stockland as his contracted-out director of communications. Stockland is, not to put too fine a point upon it, a right-wing religious zealot who used to write a column for the Sun chain a million years ago, and in that capacity (declaration of interest here) tried to smear me as anti-Catholic when I took on a local homophobe who was trying to shut down a university radio station for being too gay-positive.

Stockland is presently the Executive Director of the Centre for Cultural Renewal, and runs a Montreal communications firm. What is the Centre for Cultural Renewal? In their own words:

The Centre for Cultural Renewal is an independent, not-for-profit, charitable organization that helps Canadians and their leaders shape a vision of civil society. To this end, we focus on the important and often complex connections between public policy, culture, moral discourse and religious belief, and produce discussion papers, forums and lectures on key issues affecting Canadian society, public policy and culture.

Our goal is to provide a vision of civil society that addresses the fundamental connections between public policy, culture, moral discourse, and religious conviction. We provide journalists, politicians and the interested public with quality resources, and believe that the quality of contemporary public dialogue is improved with the inclusion of many aspects of the rich and complex vision of the human person viewed in relationship to others, and bearing rights and responsibilities. [emphases added]

What does that mean in reality? This sort of thing:

In late 2009, the Quebec government published its new policy to combat homophobia. Though far-reaching,the policy has generated little commentary of substance. The Centre for Cultural Renewal, in keeping with its mandate to build understanding between faith and culture, has agreed to post a provocative critique written by Douglas Farrow, professor of Christian Thought at McGill University in Montreal.

After analyzing the policy and the thinking behind it, Professor Farrow warns "no society that adopts such (thinking) can hope to survive for long, for along with the reforming and redemptive effects of religion it has rejected the natural, self-replenishing diversity that is the root of its own vitality, in favour of an artificial, stifling “diversity” that can only degenerate into a culture of compulsion and despair." He further urges citizens inside and outside of Quebec to make public their vigorous dissent from the policy. Whether or not those who read Professor Farrow's document dissent from the policy or from his critique, we welcome all thoughtful, fair-minded responses and will try to publish a representative selection. [emphasis added]

What does the organization stand for? No boundaries between public policy and religion, and genteel homophobia, for starters. Extreme religious ideology, in other words, if cloaked in relatively moderate language. And now the organization's Executive Director has been injected directly into the on-going Rights and Democracy war.

More oil, as Yogi Berra might have said, on troubled flames. And the fire is not by any means confined to a small office in Montreal.

[H/t Norman Spector via BCL]