OpenVPN will not recognize paths with spaces in Mint 19

[somelurker]

I recently had a perplexing series of errors while attempting to connect to an OpenVPN server. I kept getting these error messages in /var/log/syslog:

Options error: --ca fails with '(Path here)': No such file or directory (errno=2)
Options error: --cert fails with '(Path here)': No such file or directory (errno=2)
WARNING: cannot stat file '(Path here)': No such file or directory (errno=2)
Options error: --key fails with '(Path here)': No such file or directory (errno=2)

I did some testing and found that I was able to connect properly when I moved the 4 files to a different directory with no spaces in the file name. Normally, I keep the 4 files in the same directory as the .ovpn file with these lines at the end of the file:

ca whatever.crt
cert whatever2.crt
key whatever3.key
tls-auth whatever4.key

So far, the only 2 working solutions I've found are:
1. Separate out the keys from the .ovpn file and keep the keys in a directory with no spaces

2. Keep the keys inside the file as in-line keys. Even in this case, the .ovpn file name must have no spaces, because Network Manager creates a directory for those keys to go in, and that directory's path includes the .ovpn's file name.

Mint 18.3 did not require me to jump through these hoops. Comparing the version numbers for the package openvpn in Synaptic, I found:

Mint 18.3 version of openvpn that did not have the bug: 2.3.10-1ubuntu2.1
Mint 19 version of openvpn that did have the bug: 2.4.4-2ubuntu1

Where is the proper place to report this bug? The word "ubuntu" is in the version name, so I'm not sure OpenVPN itself would be willing to deal with it. Could someone more experienced with bug reporting give me a hand please?