| An Atypical Synopsis Shooting the Messenger A Whistleblower's Tale, A True Story First there was the theft of millions of dollars (probably the longest running fraud on the public purse by public servants in the history of Canada), then there was the clandestine attempt to contravene the Official Languages Act and deny French-Canadians working in our embassies in France, Belgium and other countries where the language spoken is predominately French the right to work in French. Shooting the Messenger is also statement about politics, morality and ethics in government. It is above all the story of how career diplomats and other high ranking officials broke the law in a most egregious manner, and how they compromised our judicial system and the reputation of a respected former Prime Minister in an effort to cover up what they had done. But most of all it is the story of what was done to the person who discovered what the diplomats and managers with the Department of Foreign Affairs did and what they intended to do. Foreword Say It Ain't So Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so. Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935 One of my first memories is of a man crying. I had played with the crying man's son in a sandbox that afternoon. It was not a real sand box, just a pile of sand dumped in the middle of a muddy driveway. The boy's father, who was in the gravel hauling business, came home at the end of the day, unaware that his son was still playing on the pile of sand, and drove over him. Missing Millions and an Inexcusable Breach of Trust The Department delivered on its promised retaliation, but it was not what I expected. If I was guilty of insubordination then I should have been accused of such then and there. That would have been the honourable course of action; but this is not what they did, and what they did is what fuels my quest for justice to this day. 1 - A Laudable Model of Behaviour “Correct conduct”, according to Mencius [372–289 BC], “arises, not through external forces, but as a result of virtues developed internally through observation of laudable models of behaviour.” A laudable model of behaviour for me was a priest. There would be others. I was particularly fond of the man for whom I was an altar-boy, a cub-scout and scout leader. My fondness for Father Tremblay was a mix of admiration and gratitude. The priest had saved my life. 2 - The BC French Connection I was packing groceries at the big Red and White supermarket on Railroad Avenue, Ashcroft's main street, where I worked after school and on weekends when a well-dressed, polite, middle-aged woman approached me and asked if he knew her daughter Glenna. If you were a French-Canadian family moving to an English-speaking province, Ashcroft would probably not have been your first choice as a place to settle. How welcoming could a town which catered to miners, ranchers and cowboys be to people who spoke English with an accent and were responsible for that foreign language on cereal boxes? 3 - The Road Back Shares of Taseko Mines had risen to 25 cents per share when he drove up to the campsite to warn me to sell all my shares immediately. The assay office in Victoria was about to make its findings public, it was fool’s gold. I sold my entire stake in Taseko just before Taseko shares plummeted into oblivion. 4 - The Wrong Lesson Learned To tell or not to tell? That was the question. I had added the numbers from the previous year’s publication and some did not add up. If this messenger had been better acquainted with the more celebrated Greek playwrights of antiquity — especially tragedians like Sophocles — he would have known that the lesson he was about to learn was the wrong one. 5 - Getting High On The Job They would return from their pot break giggling like school-girls. People who took the elevators at the end of the day wondered out loud where that marijuana smell came from. When it finally sank in that I had lost out on a wonderful opportunity because of Cheech and Chong, I no longer felt comfortable in their company or with what they were doing. 6 - An Appalling Indiscretion When I came back from lunch she wasn’t there. "Where is she?" I asked Arthur. When he told me, I only felt a twinge of remorse. That would change. It wasn't my decision after all. It wasn't even Art's. I had told Art, who had told the Chairman, who had told Art what to do, or so Art told me. Years later I would fully appreciate the pain and humiliation I must have caused. 7 - Rakesh She was crying her eyes out and could barely speak as she collapsed in a chair in the whistleblower’s office. Her husband had just called and accused her of cheating on him. 8 - The Death Of Janine Rakesh quit and moved on. Janine quit and died. Janine worked in the mailroom. I did not know Janine that well, but accompanying her friends and family to her final resting place is one of the more difficult duties I ever had to perform. 9 - Audrey Audrey was a statuesque black woman from the island of St Lucia. Audrey had a temper, which may explain why she was at the top of one manager's list as the person I would have to “deal with” if I was going to turn things around. Landers said he had tried, but all he got for his troubles was a waste basket kicked in his general direction when he interrupted her work. 10 - Foreign Affairs Beckons I was the last one to join the team that had been put together to overhaul the way the Department tracked and accounted for expenditures made by diplomats and their staff. The Auditor General suspected that la crème-de-la-crème of the Canadian Public Service, the Foreign Service, had sticky fingers. It would be my misfortune to confirm the Auditor General’s suspicions. 11 - The Fifty Percent Solution Gordon was incredulous. That can't be, he said, the gains indicated are at least twice what posts are reporting. 12 - Tokyo Lets the Cat Out of the Bag Tokyo's initial response was not at all what Gordon and I expected. Tokyo dispensed with any diplomatic niceties in its telegram telling Gordon what he could do with his calculations. Dave Gordon was a proud and ambitious man. Not only had I made him look like a fool but, if Tokyo was right, a potential windfall of more than seven million dollars, a tidy chunk of change even then, had just evaporated. 13 - A Mugging in Amsterdam It was purely by accident that I discovered that our accountant in Brussels was in on the fraud. I ran into him coming out of Gordon’s office during a short visit to Ottawa. I could not resist asking him how it was possible for Brussels to have under reported gains on foreign currency transactions by at least a quarter of a million dollars. 14 - Yours, Mine and Ours There was a certain logic to Foreign Affairs dividing the world along linguistic lines. French-speaking officers for French-speaking countries; English-speaking officers for English-speaking countries, with the rest of the world shared among both linguistic groups. Where this logic broke down was in Ottawa. 15 - The Return of the Double Standard What was it with this Department? Richard had been at Foreign Affairs for maybe a year, and already he had fallen for the mantra that whatever Canadians can do, others can do better. During my time in this parallel universe where the laws I was familiar with did not apply, it had never occurred to me to talk to outsiders about the goings on at Foreign Affairs. The Department is not only Canada's window on the world, but also the world's window on Canada. 16 - No Future Here They left me in my small beige cell with my impossible pointless task for months on end, on display, an example for the dozens who every day had to traverse the narrow corridor in front of where I sat at my desk, behind that floor-to-ceiling wall of glass, with my desktop calculator, pad and pencil starring into space. What were they waiting for? 17 - Ambassador Chrétien When I met Raymond Chrétien he was between ambassadorial assignments and was keeping busy as Director General of the Management Review and Audit Bureau. Every department of the Federal Government, like large corporations, has someone in charge of ensuring that the keepers of the public purse are not tempted to help themselves. Between 1983 and 1985 Chrétien was that someone. 18 - McGahey McGahey had just closed the door to his office after welcoming me with a crisp handshake outside his office, in front of his secretary, when the air turned blue. One obscenity followed another, “you bastard”, “you son of bitch”, “you fuck’n asshole.” So much for Ambassador Chrétien’s polite assurances. 19 - The Appraisal From Hell Days had stretch into weeks, weeks into months alone in my little grey cell wondering when the axe would fall when Richard invited me to his office. This was a few weeks after I had met with Raymond Chrétien, and maybe a day after McGahey. My scheduled annual performance review was at least four months away when Richard presented me with a very special appraisal of my performance on which Gordon had already signed off. This special performance appraisal would become known as The Appraisal From Hell. 20 - Amb. Fortier and Commissioner Yalden Trade Jobs She did not stay long. She did not even bother to sit down. Holding back tears the young investigator said she was quitting because of the “bullshit" (my translation of "de la merde") report the Commissioner of Official Languages was about to make public. She said she was transferring to Correctional Services or Parole Services, or some other organization having to do with the care, feeding and rehabilitation of convicted felons, where she hoped to meet a better class of people then she had met at Foreign Affairs. 21 – The Pontius Pilate Letter The Pontius Pilate Letter is dated March 11, 1986 and is signed by a Gilbert Langelier. Mr. Langelier reported directly to Commissioner Fortier, therefore, the former diplomat can be assumed to have given the letter his blessing. 22 - A Whistleblower’s Christmas Memories of Wendy Wendy always wore bright colours. My favourite was an orangey red outfit that was a perfect match for her reddish, brownish blonde hair which was parted in the middle and framed her face like the character of Sabrina in the TV series Sabrina the Teenage Witch. She wore her colours well, and when she walked into my little beige cell and sat down or just leaned on the door frame with her arms crossed, with more than the hint of a sympathetic smile, she brightened up my day. 23 - A Sunny Day In May Every morning, if the sun was shining, for a few hours the corridor in front of the small beige cell where I sat would be flooded with sunlight from the east facing windows in the section further down the hall where the bosses had their offices. I was staring into the brilliant May sunshine flooding the usually gloomy corridor when Bruce came running in. 24 - R. G. Woolham and the Appraisal From Hell For a Department that aspires to lofty inspirational goals—to professionalism, to being the paradigm of Canadian values and of civilized behaviour—you might expect that in victory it would be magnanimous. But the diplomats would reveal themselves—even in victory—as petty and vindictive. The man who heard my appeal against The Appraisal From Hell was a diplomat by the name of Robert Gordon Woolham. Soon to be Ambassador Woolham was also between diplomatic assignments keeping busy as Director General of the Personnel Administration Bureau. 25 - J. T. Boehm's Sense of Humour Soon to be Ambassador John Thomas Boehm faced a much more difficult ethical choice than his predecessor. Unlike our new High Commissioner to Jamaica, Robert Gordon Woolham, who was only required to rule on whether the character assassins' appraisal of my character and abilities was justified, Boehm was asked to overrule his boss, J. G. Harris, Assistant Deputy Minister, Personnel Branch. In the topsy-turvy world at Foreign Affairs this made perfect sense. 26 - Nonsense ... Evelyne: When he had access to the computer, did Mr. Payeur produce the Currency Fluctuation Reports on time and in the manner requested? Richard: Yes. Evelyne: Why did you not simply give him access to the tools he had used in the past to prepare the reports when you realize that you were losing millions of dollars because he could not do them using only an adding machine? Richard: Like I said before, he did not need access to the computers to produce the currency fluctuation reports. I already told you that, and it is all his fault if today we cannot keep track of millions of dollars. It's his fault for getting himself fired! Because he got himself fired, we had to dismantle the Currency Fluctuation Reporting System because nobody knew how to run it. We even hired a consultant for $ 90,000.00 so he could tell the consultant how the system worked before we fired him. ... Evelyne: Such an appraisal (The Appraisal From Hell) is grounds for immediate dismissal for incompetence or incapacity isn't? Richard: I don't know. Evelyne: If this appraisal was not going to be used to get rid of Mr. Payeur, why such an appraisal six months (it was four months) before his regular appraisal was due? Richard: To get him to do his job. Evelyne: Anyone with such an appraisal is obviously incapable of doing even the most menial tasks, let alone all the complex calculations required to do the currency fluctuation reports? Richard: We thought that this appraisal (The Appraisal From Hell) would convince him that we were serious about getting our reports. Evelyne: So what you're saying is that such a horrible appraisal is just the Department's way of motivating employees? Richard: Yes. Evelyne: To your knowledge, do you know of anyone else who received such an appraisal? Richard: I don't know of anyone else. ... 27 - A Judge is Blackmailed! After three days of hearings before adjudicator Brown where a mountain of evidence had been introduced as to the perfidy of Foreign Affairs officials, including evidence that their actions to force me out were nothing short of criminal, what could Leduc possibly say in rebuttal? Leduc did not even try! He simply opened his briefcase took out Joe Clark’s letter to me and as he walked to where Thomas W. Brown sat in judgment said: “I have here a letter from the Honourable (it should have been the Right Honourable) Joe Clark to Mr. Payeur where he expresses complete confidence in officials." He placed the letter in front of adjudicator Brown, looked him in the eye, and dared him to call Joe Clark a liar. 28 - Evelyne's Choice Evelyne was taken aback by this last minute introduction into evidence of Joe Clark’s letter, but not Thomas W. Brown. During the entire hearing, Thomas W. Brown had sat there like a lump on a log taking notes, saying very little. His demeanor when Leduc placed the letter before him, daring him to call Joe Clark a liar did not change one bit. He put the letter aside and wrote himself a note. 29 – Thomas W. Brown and the Monstrous Lie Foreign Affairs clearly did not have the legal authority to deem that actions required by law had taken place when they clearly had not. If a judge allowed this, then, the Department was and is above the law, is a law unto itself. 30 – Et tu, PSAC? It took Thomas W. Brown maybe a few seconds, after reading the letter from the Right Honourable Joe Clark praising his officials, to realize that it was probably not in his interest to find these officials guilty of anything. As to when the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) gave Evelyne the green light to sacrifice her client to save a friend is unclear. 31 – The Poisoned Affidavit Before the Federal Court will hear your appeal, you have to provide it with your arguments in writing; it's called a Memorandum of Points of Arguments. The same is required of the Respondent, in this instance, Treasury Board (Foreign Affairs). In their Memorandum of Points of Arguments prepared by Bouzigon, Treasury Board admits that Joe Clark’s letter probably influenced Thomas W. Brown’s decision but that the point is moot since neither my representative or myself asked the adjudicator to disqualify himself after he admitted to being concerned about the impact of the letter*. 32 – In the Federal Court of Appeal Federal Court of Appeal Judge Louis Marceau was adamant! I had not been fired because of my discovery of the theft of millions of dollars. It was worse than that! 33 – In the Supreme Court of Canada I had just stepped up to the lectern and was getting ready to address the Court when a group of school children on a field trip were ushered in by their teacher. If anything, they would learn a valuable lesson about getting justice in Canada that day. 34 – Proof of Perjury I had always wondered why Foreign Affairs would risk losing tens of millions of dollars by insisting that I do a job that required the use of a large mainframe computer using only an adding machine, pencil and paper. It did not make sense. I need not have wondered. They were not risking anything. 35 – The Betrayal Of Joe Clark Joe Clark betrayed me and he, in turn, was betrayed by those who convinced him that betraying me was the right thing to do. My wife was in Montréal at a government sponsored conference at the Place Victoria Hotel where she recognized Denis Beaudoin. Beaudoin was Special Assistant to Joe Clark during Clark's time at Foreign Affairs. 36 – So What! What did I really accomplish? Did I really save the taxpayer tens of millions of dollars? Probably not! A few years ago, diplomats were discovered to be changing their first class and business class plane tickets for economy class and pocketing the difference, which was illegal. Not to worry, regulations were changed to make it all legal, retroactively of course. They may have implemented my design and used my formulas, but did they actually follow through with the collection of moneys owing? I doubt it. Afterword Ministers of the Crown are ultimately responsible for whistleblowers finding themselves on the receiving end of so much grief for simply doing the right thing. If Ministers held themselves to a higher standard of conduct and expected their officials to do the same there would be little or no need for whistleblowers. Joe Clark was your typical Minister at Foreign Affairs. The former Prime Minister held his officials to the most minimum of standards: “make me look good, or at least don’t make me look bad, and you can have the run of the place.” Epilogue Since learning about the alleged extraordinary bonus paid to my former boss at Foreign Affairs (the Department refuses to confirm or deny that such a bonus was paid) for the damage my discoveries had on his career, every time there is a new Minister at Foreign Affairs, I write to the Honourable Member of Her Majesty’s Government to ask if they would re-instate my pension. Surely, it is the least they can do. -------------------------------------------------------------- FURTHER READINGS What Does The Group of Seven Have To Do With Anything? If you think you are above the law then it logically follows that you can’t break laws that you do not acknowledge apply to you. Carried to the extreme, you will reach a point where you are a law unto yourself. You can do no wrong because whatever you do is beyond reproach. You are a modern Louis XIV, you are the law. Mila's Friend and a Briefcase Full of Cash Mary Francis was the social secretary to the Greek Ambassador to Canada. She not only planned but hosted official functions for and with the ambassador. Mary was also a childhood friend of Mila Mulroney. She was with Mila at the exclusive Mont Royal Tennis Club when the future Prime Minister and the future Ms. Mulroney first laid eyes on each other. Investigative Journalism Canadian Style On some other day I might have been interested in the sexual peccadilloes of Globe and Mail reporters and editors but not that day. Confusion and Where Have All the Fish Gone? If I understood Massé’s explanation correctly, what was important was that they were all fish. Massé went on to explain what he had previously described as career streaming. All officers would be allowed to choose a stream, a career stream e.g. diplomacy, commerce, aid and such. If he or she did not like the stream he or she was in, he or she could always jump to another stream or simply go-with-the-flow. -------------------------------------------------------------- Missing Millions and an Inexcusable Breach of Trust The Department delivered on its promised retaliation, but it was not what I expected. If I was guilty of insubordination then I should have been accused of such then and there. That would have been the honourable course of action; but this is not what they did, and what they did is what fuels my quest for justice to this day.
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