The Devil Wears Birkenstock.

To be honest, I can’t recall ever looking at Elizabeth May’s feet. So maybe she goes in for Jimmy Choo strappies and Ferragamo stilettos.

It’s a metaphor. Because there’s plenty of hippie extraction in Green Party ideology.

But the party-of-one leader — May holding the only House of Commons seat won by Greens in the last federal election — was certainly portrayed in whiny complaints as cut from the same cloth as tyrannical fashion mag editor Miranda Priestly, in the novel and movie The Devil Wears Prada, a character widely believed to have been based on Vogue dominatrix and stick insect Anna Wintour.

Stroppy and bullying and infusing the workplace with toxicity, as first reported by the Star’s Alex Ballingall in January.

Three individuals expressed dismay over May’s intolerable conduct: former interim executive director Rob Rainer, who accused the 63-year-old leader of “verbal and emotional abuse”; Diana Nunes, the party’s director of finance for a decade until she was axed in 2015, who recalled numerous instances where May allegedly “threw a fit” and yelled at employees, describing May as “mean to the core”; and another former staffer, Vanessa Brustolin, a short-term party organizer in Manitoba and Ontario, who asserted that May had yelled at her on three occasions, further claiming she’d been terminated after complaining about the behaviour.

Well, boo-hoo.

That would have been my response, based on 40-plus years in the private sector workforce and countless Horrible Bosses.

But times they have a-changed and of course the party launched a formal external investigation into the avowals.

Amusing, though, that the party of tree huggers stood accused of mistreating people.

Outside investigations are all the rage these days, most notably invoked by political parties of all stripes virtue-signalling that they take such complaints seriously, comically evidenced in yin-yang duelling surrounding federal NDP MP Christine Moore, simultaneously complainant and respondent in separate allegations of sexual harassment.

From the get-go, May vehemently denied she was a bootstrap brute. “I am consistently opposed to bullying,” she told reporters after the matter became public. “I’ve stood up to bullying numerous times.”

The party-of-one fell into lockstep support, quick to pounce on cultural gender discrepancy for establishing different standards for men and women. “A man with these qualities is admired for his leadership,” said a statement the party released at the time. “A woman is portrayed as overbearing and bullying. These outdated gender stereotypes have no place in 21st century Canada.”

There is undoubtedly truth in that. Tough women are often characterized as ball-breaking Valkyries. Yet, when it serves the opposite purpose, also depicted as delicate creatures who can’t stand the heat, cringing from men who stand too close or hover or crack dumbass jokes, therefore in need of cotton-ball cushioning.

On Thursday, May got her piece of flesh vindication: The complaints did not constitute workplace harassment, at least as defined by Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act. Without merit.

That was the finding of the investigation, led by Toronto lawyer Sheila Block.

The full report is being kept confidential. But the executive summary explains that the allegations were reviewed in the context of “the relevant legal standard” for workplace harassment — that a person engaged “in a course of vexatious comment or conduct against a worker in a workplace that is known or ought reasonably to be known to be unwelcome.”

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I have a fundamental problem with that definition. “Unwelcome” seems too broad a catch-all for the everyday dynamics of a workplace and vexatious is in the eye of the vexed. There’s often no reason to raise one’s voice or belittle an employee but it’s standard practice and, you know, grow up. Because, for most of us, you are the boss of me.

Only two of the original complainants, Rainer — who made nine allegations of harassment against May — and Nunes, who, in her interview, said she didn’t have specific allegations of harassment by May but was unhappy with the woman’s treatment of others in a general way and concerned about the administration of the Green Party, co-operated in the investigation. “In our opinion,” says the report of these amorphous grumps, “even if we accept them as accurate, none of them constitute workplace harassment.”

Elizabeth May says she will not step down as Green party leader while an independent investigator looks into allegations of bullying from three former employees. May says she is grateful for the messages of support she has received. (The Canadian Press)

Brustolin, who had minimal contact with May during her three months of employment, declined to be interviewed so the investigators had to rely on one email and interviews with others. Brustolin told the Star’s Ballingall Thursday, via email, that she wasn’t surprised by the investigation’s results, was always suspicious of the process, and that the outcome was essentially a fait accompli, though not providing any evidence to back that up. “The Green Party would never have commissioned a report, which would have been unfavourable to Elizabeth May. The Green Party of Canada is Elizabeth May.”

Also true, that last part. But implicit in Brustolin’s whinge is the assertion that a complainant ought to set the parameters of an independent investigation. Not, say, the law.

This is the mess of found truths we’ve gotten ourselves into.

Oh, there were tensions between the complainants and May. Cry me a river. These appear to be former employees with a three-handled axed to grind.

If the Greens have an underlying cultural problem — and the mistaken belief among “a number of interviewees” was that the investigation had a wider mandate to probe — then it’s the party’s responsibility to correct it, should correcting be required or desired.

Is there an adult in the room? Nobody is compelled by law to behave nicely-nicely or be force-marched into politesse unless the complaints rise to actionable levels. Which they evidently did not here. A lot of this can be put down to interpersonal relationships, which is most often not quantifiable and shouldn’t be kicked up to a Mommy Investigator.

Of course, May countered that she’s nice enough, please and thank-you. But so what if she isn’t? So what if she’s an ogress? I’d have had more respect for May if she just told her detractors to bugger off.

How are we to measure the barometric atmosphere of a workplace? That’s what you bitch to colleagues about over beers. We working stiffs in the real world — more specifically, the non-unionized world — either like it or lump it. The lazy or incompetent — in the non-unionized seniority-protected world — can be fired. Heck, I’ve quit more times than I can count on the fingers of both hands. My bosses usually ignore me.

Green for eco. Green for envy. And green as in the colour of bile.

Rosie DiManno is a columnist based in Toronto covering sports and current affairs. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno

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