After a four year battle to expose lavish spending by Canadian diplomats from Asia to Europe to Latin America, a whistleblower has been given the right to sue the government for C$36 million

By Asian Pacific News Service

Joanna Gualtieri is going to get her day in court.

After a four year court battle to expose lavish spending of tax dollars by Canadian diplomats and alleged systematic harassment by managers at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Gualtieri has now been given the right to be heard in a court.

"I, after four years am simply being restored to a position that I should have always had as a Canadian," Gualtieri told the Asian Pacific Post this week.

"It is a significant legal victory for all whistleblowers in the country and for those civil servants who are suffering in silence." Gualtieri, a lawyer, was hired in the early 1990s by the Department of Foreign Affairs to help manage more than $2-billion in Canadian government property abroad.

As she travelled around the world inspecting the properties, Gualtieri compiled a litany of waste, abuses and violation of Treasury guidelines that was costing the taxpayer millions of dollars. Gualtieri said when she tried to raise this in reports to her bosses, she was ostracized, sidelined and harassed.

Gualtieri, 40, and her co-worker John Guenette filed a civil suit in June, 1998, asking for $3-million each in damages against the federal government and eight Foreign Affairs managers. They also sued for $30-million in punitive damages to set up a non-profit organization to protect the rights of government employees.

An Ontario Superior Court judge threw out the lawsuit in January, 2001, and ruled the two employees were limited to the grievance process in place for members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada union.

Last week, an Ontario Court of Appeal ruled the two can go ahead with their C$36 million lawsuit. The three-judge panel also ordered the federal government to pay $50,000 toward the legal costs of Gualtieri and Guenette.

The appeal court judges agreed that Gualtieri and Guenette needed an independent adjudicator and not be confined to a process where the people they accused also heard their complaints.

The original lawsuit among others named former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy, who is currently the director of University of British Columbia's Liu Centre for the Study of Global Issues, as a defendant.

He was however excluded as a defendant after Gualtieris union - PSAC - which funded the appeal insisted he be dropped from the lawsuit.

Gualtieri said she is unhappy with the decision not to include Axworthy as she had 'complained directly to him and that nothing was done about it.'

Axworthy, who was defended by a private law firm paid for by the taxpayer has declined to comment directly on the case. His lawyers argued that there is no evidence to show wrongdoing by the former minister.

"It is the ultimate irony that Axworthy, who as minister of foreign affairs and who has distinguished himself globally as a passionate advocate for human and civil rights, has ignored abuses in his own department,'' Gualtieri said.

Gualtieri, who is now making preparations for her day in court, including assembling a new legal team, said that Axworthy may still be called as a witness in her case.

"I would like to hear what actions if any he took when I made my complaints." The trial is expected to expose the culture of secrecy in the Department of Foreign Affairs and give the public a glimpse of how some Canadian diplomats lived the high live and violated the public trust.

For Gualtieri, the right to be heard means a new battle in a fight that has already drained her physically, emotionally and financially.

"When you take on the country's biggest law firm, the Department of Justice, you have a big fight on your hands," said the whistleblower.

"But I won't be silenced."