Djiboutian-Canadian diplomat’s ordeal uncovers systemic racism at Global Affairs Canada

Analysis: A diplomat’s lonely fight exposes a bigger test for Canada’s foreign service

OTTAWA — The room was quiet when Madina Iltireh finished talking. She had just told a small crowd of former colleagues and friends what it felt like to represent Canada abroad while, she says, being made to feel she did not belong. “I was representing Canada, but Canada did not represent me,” she said softly, standing in a downtown Ottawa conference room. “I went through hell.”

The hell she describes unfolded thousands of kilometres away, in Kuwait City, during a three-year posting between 2018 and 2021. The Djibouti-Canadian public servant — who spent more than two decades in Canada’s foreign aid administration — filed eight complaints of discrimination against her then-ambassador, alleging racial harassment, intimidation and exclusion from official workspaces. Internal investigators dismissed the claims. She took the rare step of asking the Federal Court to intervene.

In 2024, the court did just that. It ordered Global Affairs Canada (GAC) to reopen the file. The independent probe that followed, obtained by Radio-Canada, upheld half of her allegations, concluding the ambassador failed to ensure Iltireh worked in a healthy environment and “encouraged and tolerated” bullying. Yet Iltireh says there has been no apology, no compensation, and, most importantly in her view, no sign the system would protect the next person in her shoes. “Show me change,” she said. “Prove this will never happen again.”

What the court forced into the open

The report paints a picture that will be painfully familiar to many racialized professionals: colleagues critiquing tone rather than content, a steady drip of exclusion from meetings, and whispers about competence. The details spill into the banalities of daily life that become significant in hardship postings — a failing air conditioner, power outages, repeated maintenance requests that languished for years. It all added up, Iltireh says, to a suffocating posting that left her anxious and forgetful. “The place I was for three years was toxic, and it was suffocating,” she told me. “I developed anxiety, I lost memory, and I’m still trying to rebuild what I lost.”

GAC insists it has a “zero-tolerance policy toward misconduct or wrongdoing,” adding that its investigators act “professionally and impartially.” The department says it is examining a standardized complaint intake model to improve recourse for staff. Anita Anand, a senior cabinet minister, called discrimination “unacceptable” and said a diverse public service strengthens Canada itself. Those words matter. But they are colliding with a set of realities that many inside the system describe as slow, defensive and, at times, punishing for those who speak up.

More than one embassy, more than one voice

What gives Iltireh’s case resonance is not just the court’s intervention, rare as that is, but the chorus behind her. “The system is dysfunctional,” said Nicholas Marcus Thompson, executive director of the Black Class Action Secretariat, which represents tens of thousands of current and former federal employees. “Workers are silenced, complaints are blocked, and while those who speak up suffer, the leadership advances.” His group has been pressing Ottawa to establish an independent body to investigate discrimination complaints and to modernize the Employment Equity Act — a reform successive governments have promised but not delivered at scale.

Within the foreign ministry itself, veteran diplomats have quietly constructed their own networks to triage distress. “She’s not an isolated case,” said Tariq Gordon, a career diplomat who helped launch a peer support group inside GAC. “There are so many stories of people suffering quietly, afraid to jeopardize their careers by speaking up.” In a world where assignments are currency, many worry that lodging a complaint — even when substantiated — brands them as difficult. And in embassies, where the chain of command is tight and the community small, the risks feel amplified.

A diplomatic service under the global microscope

Canada is not alone in this reckoning. Diplomacy carries a certain romance — great rooms, national flags, painstaking toasts — but it also runs on hierarchy. After 2020, as social movements reshaped the conversation about equity and power, foreign services from Washington to London to Paris found themselves looking in the mirror. The U.S. State Department elevated diversity work to the policy front line and pledged to reduce barriers in recruitment and promotions. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office faced its own allegations of racism and discrimination, with staff unions demanding better accountability. France’s Quai d’Orsay, wrestling with a broader reform, heard from diplomats who feared losing merit-based protections and asked whether reform would also address representation at the highest ranks.

Canada’s story fits this pattern. Representation improves at entry level; it thins at the top. Progress is real but uneven, vulnerable to leadership changes and budget squeezes. The difference now is that a Federal Court decision has yanked one embassy’s internal management culture into public view and set a benchmark for scrutiny. For a quiet profession, this is noisy — and necessary.

What real change might look like

So what now? If you are a young Canadian weighing a diplomatic career — perhaps multilingual, raised between worlds, someone the foreign service says it wants — what would convince you the system will have your back when a posting goes off the rails?

• Independent investigations: Not just better intake forms, but an arm’s-length body empowered to receive, investigate and remedy discrimination complaints across departments, with binding timelines and transparent outcomes.
• Accountable leadership: Ambassadors and senior managers should have explicit performance indicators tied to workplace health, with consequences when they fail — and credit when they build inclusive teams.
• Safe reporting: Whistleblower protections that actually work, especially in small missions abroad where anonymity is hard, and a guarantee that career progression won’t stall because someone raised their hand.
• Fair living conditions: Clear service standards for housing, safety and facilities in hardship postings, independent inspections, and a simple escalation ladder when things break — from air conditioners to policies.
• Public metrics: Regular, disaggregated data on hiring, promotions and complaints, so the public can see whether change is taking root, not just announced.

These are not abstract fixes. They are the daily scaffolding of a workplace where ambition can thrive without fear. And they answer a pragmatic question countries ask themselves all the time: how do we project values abroad if we can’t guarantee them at home?

The cost, and the test

Cases like Iltireh’s travel because they are specific and universal at once. They involve an apartment in Kuwait City, an office door left closed, a meeting one wasn’t invited to. But they raise bigger questions any public service must face: Who gets to belong? Who gets to be believed? Who gets to lead?

When I asked what justice would look like, Iltireh didn’t hesitate. An apology, yes, and compensation for lost time and health. But also reforms she can point to when she tells a younger colleague it’s safe to speak. “Hopefully, the ministry will change so the people coming after me don’t have to go through what I did,” she said.

It is tempting to see this as a story about one department, one country, one embassy. It isn’t. It is a mirror held up to a profession that prides itself on reading the room — and is now being asked to read the room within its own walls. Canada’s diplomats carry passports with a maple leaf whose brand is inclusion. The measure of that brand is not the speech at the national day reception. It’s whether, when the doors close, the people inside feel seen, safe and able to do the work they signed up to do.

Madina Iltireh, a Djibouti-Canadian former diplomat, stands in an Ottawa conference room after speaking publicly about the discrimination she says she endured while serving at Canada’s embassy in Kuwait. Iltireh took her case to the Federal Court, which ordered Global Affairs Canada to investigate her claims — a ruling that has intensified scrutiny of systemic racism within the department. (Photo/CBC News)

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.