She won, I guess, sort of but the big loser is you and I coz, you will read, successive guvs, Red and Blue, have snapped and have decided that public servants cannot sue the Crown aka the government.
Our story of Joanna Gualtieri's valiant battle to expose government squander, and the resulting 12 years of federal lawyers trying to crush her, triggered a firestorm of outrage among readers across the country.
Most found it hard to believe the government of a country not officially a banana republic would be allowed to drag a public service whistleblower through hell for doing the job Canadians expect.
The good news is the Conservatives under Prime Minister Stephen Harper were true to their election promise to introduce legislation to protect future government whistleblowers such as Gualtieri.
The bad news is the laws they actually introduced are mainly protecting the government.
As we reported recently, Gualtieri spent six years as a property manager at Foreign Affairs, trying to blow the whistle on outrageous extravagance she uncovered at Canadian embassies around the world.
Far from being rewarded for her diligence on behalf of taxpayers and just good government, Gualtieri was hounded, harassed and ultimately run out of her job by a bureaucracy more interested in protecting a culture of entitlement than in serving the public.
She sued for harassment, and for more than a decade, the government legal gorillas pounded her until she collapsed in a complete physical and mental breakdown.
All the while, successive political regimes -both Liberal and Conservative -- turned their backs.
Last month, the government finally agreed to settle the landmark case on the eve of having to face judge and jury at trial. Today, Gualtieri's case would have been dead before it started.
In 2003, the then Liberal government changed the law, making it almost impossible for a public servant to sue the crown.
In 2006, Harper and his Conservative party campaigned on bold promises to undue the ban on lawsuits, and to usher in a whole new era of whistleblower protection.
A friend of Gualtieri says she so believed Harper's promises of accountable government that the beleaguered whistleblower even campaigned for a Conservative candidate.
Alas, it was all a crock.
Four years later, whistleblowers still can't sue the federal government. Even if they could, the new law provides legal assistance up to $3,000 for cases that often cost millions.
Instead, the Conservatives' new world of open and accountable government provides a new bureaucracy that will ensure, by law, that most wrongdoing is forever kept secret from Canadians.
No wonder the Gualtieri saga has touched raw nerves among ordinary folk, dozens of whom have contacted us since the story appeared.
Anne Wilkings wondered: "If a lawyer like Gualtieri couldn't convince either Liberals or Conservatives to do the right thing in this instance, what can an ordinary citizen do? What kind of country are we living in? I won't vote for either of those parties until she receives an apology from both of them."
Patrick J. McKenna fired off a rocket to his local MP, the first time the author says he has written in protest to a politician.
"Words cannot express how I feel about the absolute waste of government funds, the tragedy of those who fight valiantly against bureaucratic systems, and the hypocrisy of those who purport to represent the people, and allow this behaviour to go unchallenged.
"I, for one, will do whatever I can to ensure that this continues to receive the attention it deserves."
So will we.
Why do we need more media, especially electronic media like in the United States? Coz the more media the more competition and the more exposition of stories like Ms. Gualtieri's. Just look at Detroit TV news; not a lot gets past 2, 4 and 7.
WFDS
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