What happens when a bureaucrat tries to blow the whistle on government spending? They get targeted as a troublemaker. Such was the case for Joanna Gualtieri, as Greg Weston of the Toronto Sun documents in a column on Gualtieri and a sequel on treatment for whistleblowers. Here's an except from the first column that could make a taxpayer's blood boil.

Joanna Gualtieri had just joined Foreign Affairs as a property manager when she got her first glimpse of taxpayer hell, a Canadian trade official’s Tokyo digs costing over $350,000 a year — in rent.

Seems the official didn’t fancy an $18-million mansion owned by the Canadian government in the same city, which consequently sat empty for almost four years....

Gualtieri was a 31-year-old lawyer and property developer when she was hired into the Foreign Affairs realty management bureau in 1992.

In her lawsuit, she described finding a bureaucratic fixation with “grandiose and luxurious accommodations and lifestyles at the expense of the Canadian taxpayer. The abuses of government policies were rampant.”

In her legal filings, Gualtieri said that far from her bosses being thrilled with her good work, they censored her reports and eventually curtailed her trips to inspect foreign embassies.

Four years after she joined Foreign Affairs, she was assigned a job with nothing to do.

She subsequently took unpaid leave, filed a $6-million harassment lawsuit and never returned.

At that point, Foreign Affairs — and its then Liberal political masters — could have sought a reasonable compromise.

Instead, justice department lawyers armed with taxpayers’ money came down with brute force on Gualtieri, already fragile from years of harassment.

Throughout, the justice department attack mutts tried to crush her with legal bills, once going to court seeking $360,000 in federal costs.

They dragged her through endless interrogations, forcing her to respond to more than 10,500 questions.

At one point, she was grilled about her sex life.

By 2006, the government had managed to generate a stack of ultimately useless paperwork more than five storeys high.

If the justice department wanted to break her, it almost worked.

One day after relentless questioning by government lawyers, Gualtieri simply collapsed.

Two months later, she had a complete breakdown.

That’s when her lawyers asked the courts to put a leash on the government hounds, and in 2008, an Ontario judge agreed enough was enough.

Last month, on the eve of finally being forced to face a judge and jury at trial, the government simply cut a cheque and walked away.

We asked Foreign Affairs if the past 18 years of ruining someone’s life at huge public expense had really been worth it.

The official response: “This case regarding a workplace issue was settled. The terms of the settlement are confidential.”

The Gualtieri case did compel the feds to make one significant change to the law, however.

It is now almost impossible for a future whistleblower to sue the government.