SECOND MAN CHARGED IN LEAK.
I GOT EVERYTHING — THE MOTHERLOAD.
OTTAWA • A federal official at the centre of the case against Vice-Admiral Mark Norman has been charged with breach of trust for allegedly leaking government secrets.
RCMP charged Matthew Matchett Wednesday and he is to appear in the Ontario Court of Justice on March 5.
Matchett was suspended without pay from his job at Public Services and Procurement Canada in October.
He is the second person accused of unlawfully disclosing details about a naval supply ship contract discussed by the Liberal cabinet in 2015.
Norman was the second-highest officer in Canada’s military when he was suspended from duty in January 2017. He was criminally charged a year later with one count of breach of trust for allegedly leaking information that the government planned to pause the contract with Quebec-based Davie Shipbuilding.
Norman maintains his innocence, and his lawyers have argued that the leak came not from Norman but from Matchett, through a prominent Ottawa lobbyist.
Details about Matchett’s alleged role were first outlined in a pre-trial hearing for Norman in November 2018. It came in RCMP records filed in court by Norman’s defence team as they tried to gather more information about Matchett, who worked for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.
Among the records was an email from Matchett’s account sent on Nov. 17, 2015, to lobbyist Brian Mersereau of Hill+Knowlton Strategies. “I got everything — the motherload,” said the email from Matchett’s account.
Mersereau, whose firm had Davie as a major client, would later tell an investigator that when he arrived the next day at his office, a package was waiting. Inside were documents that were to be presented at a meeting on Nov. 19, 2015, where a cabinet committee would debate the future of the $700-million supply ship project. The RCMP would seize the documents in a raid of Mersereau’s office six months later.
Postmedia has made numerous attempts to contact Matchett, but he has not responded.