Vice-admiral now fights for own memos

Now, the squad of prosecutors and justice lawyers lined up against Vice-admiral Mark Norman, the former commander of the Canadian Navy, have said very little at this week’s proceeding here.

In fairness, what the court is hearing is a defence application for production of third-party records Norman’s lawyers say they need to defend him on a single charge of breach of trust, which means it’s on the defence to do most of the talking.

So it is within the realm of possibility that when one of the six government lawyers does stand up to say something substantial, he or she may be able to offer an explanation for some of the documents they don’t want Norman’s defence to have.

But it strains credulity to imagine one for why the government is actually fighting handing over to the defence Norman’s own Outlook calendar and the notes and communications with his former staff about the once-disputed interim Auxiliary Oiler Replenishment (IAOR) ship that is at the centre of the charge against him.

(The ship is no longer disputed, having been delivered, astonishingly in the world of military procurement, on time and on budget.)

Without AORS, which are basically floating gas stations, a navy is reduced to the status of a coast guard, unable to meet its international obligations.

“The Department of Justice suggests if memos were sent to Vadm Norman, he should have them,” defence lawyer Christine Mainville told Ontario Court Judge Heather Perkins-mcvey Thursday.

Then with magnificent snark, Mainville added, “They seem to forget they suspended him from his duties” (in January of 2017) and thus Norman has no access to his 2014-2015 archived emails and notes.

As Perkins-mcvey said in her mild way, “It’s hard to imagine his own communications wouldn’t have relevance.”

Thus has a document fight been rendered a theatre of the absurd.

How can anyone accused of a crime properly defend himself if he can’t have access to the very calendar which would tell him what appointments he had, who he saw, what people he met four years earlier?

It’s just one of the rich aspects of this curious case.

Norman has been accused of leaking confidential information — the only one criminally charged — yet it appears that even beyond what is the norm for Ottawa, all around him, even before him, a great many others had comparable information and were also busily leaking it.

Norman is charged with leaking information about the accursed IAOR ship to a CBC reporter and to a former colleague in the navy who was now working for Chartier Davie, the Quebec company that built the ship and whose proposal had convinced the then-government of Stephen Harper to change the rules to allow the contract to be awarded on a solesource basis.

The RCMP investigation even identified and named the people involved who did give the reporter the actual Memorandum to Cabinet and, for good measure, the slide deck.

The material came from a government analyst who handed it off to a big lobbyist (working for Davie), who then told the reporter he could swing by and pick up the brown envelope.

It had naught to do with Mark Norman.

Yet, as the defence said in its application, the government analyst wasn’t charged, though recently, he was apparently suspended. The CBC reporter who got the documents and wrote the story was, the very week Norman was charged, hired by the Liberal government, first in the Department of National Defence, then later moved to the Ministry of Democratic Institutions.

Yet prosecutors argue in their factum that “focusing on what others thought or did is a needless and irrelevant exercise.”

In other words, the judge ought not to worry what the other kids did, just about what Norman allegedly did.

So much for the old “no man is an island” wisdom; the state says Norman was that island.

Why on earth would the government pick on him, this honourable fellow who isn’t alleged to have benefited personally in any way and who served the country for 35 years in uniform?

Well, say defence lawyers Mainville, Marie Henein and Maya Borooah, the answer is found in Nova Scotia MP Scott Brison, then and now president of the Treasury Board.

One of the Harper government’s last acts, on the very day of the Oct. 19, 2015, election, was to sign a preliminary contract with Chartier Davie. It had an $89-million penalty clause if the contract wasn’t finalized.

The new Trudeau government was sworn in, in early November 2015. One of its first acts was to swear in an ad hoc committee to review the Davie deal.

The committee was slated to meet Nov. 19.

Two days before, Irving Shipbuilders sent a letter to a number of key ministers, including Brison, urging the government not to sign the contract with Davie, their competitor.

At that meeting, it was Brison who pressed for a delay in signing the contract, ostensibly so the new government could do its due diligence.

The defence says it was Brison, allegedly close to the powerful Irvings and whose Nova Scotia riding is next door to the main Irving shipyard, who was “behind the effort to delay and potentially terminate the Davie agreement.”

Brison told the RCMP, this about Norman’s alleged conduct, that why, he had never seen such a leak of cabinet confidences in his 20 years in federal politics.

As Mainville told the judge, perhaps “Minister Brison has forgotten the RCMP investigation into his own leaking,” back in 2006. Brison was never charged, and his explanation, Mainville said, “was that all he was doing was saying something everyone already knew about.” D’oh.

The case continues Friday.