National Post (National Edition)
NEW TWIST IN LEAK OF CABINET SECRETS
RCMP allegation may hurt case against Norman
The RCMP alleges that an employee in the federal government’s procurement department, one who has no links to the military’s nowsuspended former secondin-command, leaked sensitive information about Canada’s troubled shipbuilding program.
The individual works at Public Services and Procurement Canada, according to information gathered by the Ottawa Citizen. He has not been charged with any offence and remains on the job in Ottawa. The RCMP first revealed their suspicions about the individual in a passing reference contained in its application earlier this year for a warrant to search the home of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman and seize his electronic devices. The officer who swore the information included no other details about him.
But the employee’s alleged involvement in leaking information could undercut any case against Norman, suspended as vice-chief of the defence staff over similar allegations.
The RCMP claims Norman leaked sensitive information about the government’s shipbuilding program. It has not charged the senior naval officer, who maintains he is innocent. But the federal police force was warned on April 21 its claims that Norman improperly released information from a Liberal government cabinet meeting could be on shaky ground.
“To be found to have been the leak which breached cabinet confidentiality the remainder of the information loop must be found to have been airtight,” Ontario Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips wrote in a ruling in response to an application by a group of media organizations, including Postmedia, to make public the details of the search warrant. “Even if Vice-Admiral Norman was putting information into the public domain, that might not mean he was the first or only one to do so. If he was not the first, was he certainly breaching confidentiality?”
“If the information was already revealed,” Phillips wrote, “would he necessarily have been engaged in a serious and marked departure from the standards expected of an individual in a similar position of public trust?”
In its application to obtain a search warrant for Norman’s cellphones and computers, the RCMP claimed “two government officials independently leaked” information about Project Resolve, the plan to convert a commercial ship into a naval supply vessel.
Norman gave officials with the Quebec firm converting the vessel information about a Liberal government proposal to derail Project Resolve, the RCMP allege, and did so in the hope it would influence the Liberals to go through with the delivery of the vessel in the face of some opposition to the project.
Details about the Liberals’ decision to put Project Resolve on hold, as well as the Irving letter and details of cabinet discussions about the matter, were leaked to the CBC in November, 2015. The leak embarrassed the new Trudeau government and sparked outrage in Quebec about the potential loss of hundreds of jobs if Davie were to lose the ship deal. The Liberals beat a quick retreat and shortly afterward, Project Resolve went ahead.
But the RCMP was brought in to find whomever had embarrassed the government by leaking information.
The RCMP case against Norman includes emails written by the officer to an official with a firm affiliated with Davie. But the value of those emails has already been questioned by Justice Phillips.
“The emails in question are by no means smoking guns,” Phillips wrote in his response to the unsealing application from the media group. “At its highest, it appears that the potential allegation against Vice-Admiral Norman is that he was trying to keep a contractual relationship together so that the country might get a badly needed supply ship.”
Phillips noted that military procurement in Canada has been plagued by incompetence. “A reasonable member of the informed public might understand the frustration of being Vice-Admiral of a Navy that cannot on its own go more than a tank of gas away from port,” he said of Norman.
The RCMP has not commented on the case.
However, the force has gathered evidence showing others also had access to the information. It recovered a Memorandum to Cabinet marked secret during a 2016 raid at the Hill and Knowlton lobbying firm in Ottawa.
Hill and Knowlton has released a statement that neither the firm, not those associated with it, are under any type of investigation.