The Ghomeshi Chronicles: PRIVILEGED and STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL REPORT, CBC WORKPLACE INVESTIGATION REGARDING JIAN GHOMESHI.

Mr. Ghomeshi was persistently late and consistently disrespectful of colleagues’ time.

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Mr. Ghomeshi would ignore colleagues for short or lengthy periods of time if they had done something that displeased him.

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Mr. Ghomeshi was scheming in the manner in which he dealt with them . . . was dismissing of them.

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Mr. Ghomeshi was moody, difficult and emotionally unpredictable.

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Mr. Ghomeshi yelled and doled out harsh criticism.

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Mr. Ghomeshi made requests of a personal nature of several colleagues that fell outside of these colleagues’ job duties.

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Mr. Ghomeshi diminished the role and contribution of colleagues by not attributing credit to them for their work.

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Mr. Ghomeshi made comments about the appearance of some colleagues. These comments were described as demeaning, inappropriate and unwanted.

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Mr. Ghomeshi played pranks and cruel jokes . . . made them feel embarrassed, anxious or upset.

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Mr. Ghomesi gave a number of colleagues back and shoulder massages. Most did not find these massages sexual, but described them as “creepy.”

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Mr. Ghomeshi’s behaviour on the whole created a stressful and “dysfunctional” environment.

Example: See all of the above. To wit, fill in the blanks. Because the 56-page report, while purporting to be completely transparent, has censored the evidentiary bits that allegedly might identify employees who had been promised anonymity if they cooperated with the investigation and 99 of them did.

Also sexual harassment in conduct and comment — “objectionable and offensive . . . likely to cause offense or humiliation to an employee,” as set out in various in-house and out-house codes, policies, acts, regulations and pinch-nosed guidelines.

The audit continues: Unwanted physical context with a female employee that was sexual in nature, soliciting dates from women in the workplace, flirting with staff and on-air guests, sharing intimate details about his sex life that were “too personal, too graphic and generally unsavoury,” though some of that, from my reading of the relevant protocols, doesn’t appear to violate the letter of the thing.

Nothing innately forbidden, for example, in the one intimate relationship Ghomeshi conducted with a co-worker in a junior position, which everyone believed to be consensual. That leg-over left the investigators in a bit of an ethical quandary because, as the boilerplate finger-waggle goes, “determining consent when one person in the employment relationship is far more powerful and influential than the other is often challenging.” At the very least, the report states, the relationship was a conflict of interest and inappropriate.

Cut to the chase: Jian Ghomeshi was an arse. A lout, a rotter, a jumped-up diva. A star, though, in the low-wattage firmament of CBC personalities.

But we knew that.

Some, colleagues and managers and those who were keenly familiar with the Mothercorp’s underbelly — or tuned in to tom-tom alerts that had been rolling out on the gossip wire for years — had been well aware of The Jian Problem.

That’s the real nut of the report, its most damning conclusion from the perspective of the CBC, which Thursday fired two senior executives, simultaneous with the scathing document’s release.

A fig’s worth of cover could be asserted by the public broadcaster because none of those who expressed discomfort and dismay with Ghomeshi’s conduct ever filed a formal complaint. They felt vulnerable because Ghomeshi was talent, the CBC darling, and could have crushed their careers.

But their bosses knew, at least those who directly managed Ghomeshi, insofar as the vanity case allowed himself to be managed. The information — as it got kicked up from producer to line manager to senior manager to executive manager — became “diluted.” Often, though, managers declined to make further enquiries, even when in possession of direct knowledge.

They knew that Ghomeshi was toxic, yet preferred not to confront him; rather, urging those who absorbed the brunt of his high-handed gaucheries to, well, suck it up. And that “gave him license” to continue, even as his prima donna realm at CBC expanded and his salary rose.

(To be clear: investigators found no evidence managers knew about allegations of sexual harassment, specifically, and the report does not tread into the allegations which resulted in Ghomeshi being charged criminally with seven counts of sexual assault and one count of overcoming resistance by choking.)

I’m unclear about the distinction between “complaint” and “notice” that managers received about Ghomeshi’s abusive conduct — which the investigators say obliged the CBC to investigate. Didn’t happen. Opportunities missed included a 2012 outline of working-condition concerns at Q by staff, known as The Red Sky Document; a journalist’s 2014 email about sexually inappropriate behaviour afoot; and an employee who objected, in writing, to Ghomeshi’s failure to respect “personal space both physically and emotionally.”

CBC had all of this information to hand last summer, before the Ghomeshi scandal exploded in the media, led by a Star investigation.

Impossible for the public broadcaster to claim it didn’t get the picture. It had big chunks of the picture — well before Ghomeshi stunningly produced for executives videos of allegedly consensual S&M romps that got him canned.

The public broadcaster promulgated a “Host Culture” that basically rendered its glitterati (as if) reproof-proof.

To borrow from a ballyhooed CBC production: Left them up Schitt’s Creek.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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