Boreal

SHOOTING THE MESSENGER

So What!

On more than one occasion I have been told by friends and acquaintances to put my firing behind me, to be proud of what I had accomplished and to get on with my life.

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. And if they did, and if history is any guide, some compensating mechanism would have been put in place, or rules changed, to keep the money legally flowing to sustain the lifestyle to which the diplomats had become accustomed courtesy of the currency exchange windfall.

In all likelihood, a clandestine do-it-yourself slush fund morphed into an official Treasury Board administered slush fund, not unlike the Sponsorship Slush Fund which was also a Treasury Board creation.

What about my complaint to the Commissioner of Official Languages which compelled Foreign Affairs to open up large sections previously off limits to Canada’s French–speaking minority, and stopped the Department from turning back the clock on language rights?

Somebody was bound to raise a complaint... eventually.

This future complaint would have revealed a world were Britannia still ruled, and the changes that I caused to happen would have happened, only later.

Whatever I did accomplish, was it worth it? What is worth the risk to my physical and mental health and the scars that won’t heal? Was it worth being cheated, slandered and libelled and eventually unceremoniously deprived of my livelihood?

No it wasn’t! But I have managed to put most of it behind me, although the withheld government pension, at this stage in my life, serves as a constant reminder of what was lost.

I must admit, I am slightly bitter for being such a chump, such an idiot for believing that a job well-done was its own reward.

At the time that I discovered that the diplomats were stealing millions of dollars the government had a program whereby public servants who identified savings, when it was not part of their job description, were entitled to ten percent of the first year’s savings to a maximum of one hundred thousand dollars.

I did not apply because I was working at a job I loved, and being well-paid for it, and that was compensation enough, and then the roof fell in.