The Harper government, contrary to recent media coverage, did not kill the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, aka Rights and Democracy. It died two years ago, after its then-President, Rémy Beauregard, was hounded to his death by an assortment of Harper appointees bent on destroying him and the organization he headed.
I posted quite a few articles at the time, largely based upon information dug up by the indefatigable Paul Wells of Maclean’s magazine, who was all over this travesty from the beginning. People interested can search my site for themselves. In the meantime, here Wells’ short requiem, which pretty well says all that needs saying at this point.
This paragraph sums it up, except for some essential record-clearing to prevent the inevitable Conservative revisionist history from taking root:
[A] Volkswagen was parked in front of R&D’s downtown Montreal office in late 2008, and an amazing succession of clowns started tumbling out of the Volkswagen, led by Perfesser Aurel Braun with his squirting lapel daisy, and pretty soon the place was in crisis, and it never came out. I have chronicled it all too many times to repeat; click the Rights and Democracy tag at the bottom of this post for the complete archive.
Please do that clicking. Even for Harper, the destruction of ICHRDD was a political masterpiece—one of deception, obfuscation, human cruelty, and the deliberate wrecking of a once-proud organization for the crassest of partisan purposes.
RIP Rémy Beauregard. And RIP Rights and Democracy, killed in January 2010, but buried only this week.