I listened to the new President of Rights and Democracy, Gérard Latulippe, testifying before the Foreign Affairs Committee earlier today. Polished, slippery and evasive he was, avoiding a lot of direct questions and doing his best to run out the clock.
The Committee, we are promised, will get chapter and verse on all those recent untendered contracts, and more information about the honoraria the Board members have been paying themselves as well.
Paul Wells was back in full spate before the Committee even met. On the famous "forensic audit" commissioned by Board member Jacques Gauthier:
[A] funny thing happened on the way to the witch-dunking. Deloitte turns out to be a serious organization. One that, it may safely be assumed, would not enjoy being conscripted into somebody else’s show trial. The audit is taking far longer than expected: Gauthier and Co. expected Deloitte to report within three weeks, but Deloitte is not quite done its work six weeks later. Serious work is being done. Which explains why the only people now demanding the audit’s release are the staff, and fired former staff, who were supposed to be its target.
Unfortunately, the mandate of Deloitte and Touche does not include the period after Gauthier became interim President. He spent $380,000 in two months, including the hiring of another Board member, the antic Marco Navarro-Génie, as his "advisor" for $3000.
Latulippe claimed today that he was looking forward to the findings. Let's see how eager he is to make the report public once the report is submitted.
