Jacques Gauthier

Hunches and goose chases at Rights and Democracy have cost taxpayers $1 million

The Commons Foreign Affairs Committee met in camera yesterday, and when the members emerged, this appeared in the minutes:

WELLS: Very well. Let them account, if their word means anything at all.

A rebuttal to Sen. Linda Frum’s guest column

The seven members of the Rights and Democracy board who support Chairman Aurel Braun are back in the pages of the National Post today, with a concerted effort to explain their side of the current dispute. This is the first time they have submitted such a piece of writing since Jan. 20, and anything from this majority faction of the board deserves the attention of readers who have been following this story closely. In part, the Braun faction’s op-ed stands as a sort of answer to the questions I put to Braun and Jacques Gauthier earlier this month. Since Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon’s actions yesterday amount to a wholehearted endorsement by the Government of Canada of everything Braun and the board have done in recent months, that’s all the more reason to consider carefully the board majority’s arguments.

(UPDATE, Tuesday at noon: Jacques Gauthier replies to this post in the comments below. For readers’ convenience, I have reproduced Gauthier’s comment at the bottom of this post. — pw)

The Rights and Democracy board announces it has hired Samson Belair/Deloitte and Touche to rummage through the agency’s books for the past five years. Reporters are invited to direct their inquiries to the new freelance communications company that interim president Jacques Gauthier has hired, to go along with the freelance office manager, the freelance private investigator, and the blue-chip audit firm he’s put on the public payroll in his never-ending efforts to get value for the taxpayer dollar. Now, guess who picks up the phone when you call Prima Communication. Go ahead, guess. Give up? Hint.

This afternoon we taped tonight’s edition of TVO’s The Agenda With Steve Paikin. The topic for most of the hour was the recent controversy at Rights and Democracy. (Click the “Rights and Democracy” tag at the bottom of this post and it will take you to everything I’ve written on the agency. There’s a lot.)

Harper’s stacking of the Rights and Democracy board got noticed. Not so with most of the other levers he shifts.