THE GUALTIERI FILE

Joanna Gualtieri can no longer talk about her whistleblowing case. She’s forbidden to do so by a sweeping confidentiality clause in her 2010 settlement with the federal government. But details have been publicly reported and are readily available to anyone interested.

Gualtieri was 31 when she was hired by Foreign Affairs as a realty strategist in 1992. That same year, the department sent her to Tokyo, where she learned that Canada’s main diplomatic compound was valued at more than $2 billion.

She discovered taxpayers were paying $350,000 a year to rent accommodations for a trade official in Tokyo while a government-owned mansion worth $18 million sat empty for more than three years.

According to allegations in documents filed as part of her legal case against the federal government, when Gualtieri reported the waste and extravagance, her superiors ignored her concerns, warning her not to use words such as “lavish” in her reports.

In the years that followed, it’s alleged Gualtieri repeatedly tried to report what she described as billions of dollars of excessive living expenses at Canadian missions. It was the job she had ostensibly been hired to do. In response, it was alleged, she was criticized, intimidated and marginalized by her own department.

In fragile health, she went on unpaid leave in 1998, filed a $6-million harassment lawsuit against the government and founded the whistleblower organization FAIR (Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform). She never returned to her job.

Her legal battle continued for 12 years, consuming much of her time and energy. According to court documents, government lawyers asked 10,579 questions between 2004 and 2007 — an interrogation the Ontario Superior Court found in 2008 constituted an abuse of the discovery process.

The Justice Department once asked the courts to order her to pay $360,000 in costs. Then, in 2010, just as the case was finally set to go to court, the government cut a cheque and settled.