Suspended admiral implicated in ships leak

OTTAWA • Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kept a safe distance Thursday from fresh revelations about a closely guarded national secret: the intrigue behind the suspension earlier this year of the Canadian military’s second in command.

Newly released court documents show that the RCMP requested a warrant in early January to search Vice-Adm. Mark Norman’s house for evidence to support allegations that topsecret information had been illegally leaked.

Asked about the new details during a news conference in New York, Trudeau demurred, just as he has done from the outset — but he also hinted at the obvious: that the cloak-and-dagger saga will end up in court.

“I support the chief of the defence staff in the decision that he took (to suspend Norman),” Trudeau said. “This is an important matter that is obviously under investigation, and will likely end up before the courts, so I won’t make any further comments at this time.”

The RCMP request was part of a months-long investigation into how details of a Liberal cabinet meeting in November 2015 were passed on to defence lobbyists and the media. During that meeting, Liberal ministers decided to pause a controversial project to convert a civilian ship into an interim resupply vessel for the navy.

The Conservative government had awarded the $700-million project to a Quebec City shipyard without a competition after the navy’s two resupply vessels were forced into early retirement.

The request to search Norman’s house came after the RCMP had interviewed several Liberal cabinet ministers as well as Ottawa lobbyists.

In his Jan. 4 request for a warrant to search Norman’s house, RCMP Cpl. Matthieu Boulanger said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe there had been a “breach of trust by a public officer,” punishable by up to five years in prison.

A heavily redacted copy of Boulanger’s search-warrant request was unsealed by an Ottawa court on Wednesday.

No charges have been laid against Norman, who was abruptly suspended without explanation on Jan. 16 by Defence Chief Gen. Jonathan Vance.

The government has refused to say anything beyond what Trudeau said Thursday, as well as that the matter was unrelated to national security.

Norman’s lawyer, Marie Henein, said in a statement in February that the 36-year military officer “unequivocally denies any wrongdoing.”

The court documents show the RCMP investigation started after then-CBC radio reporter James Cudmore reported on Nov. 20, 2015, that the new Liberal government had put the interim ship project on hold.

Boulanger writes in his search-warrant request that the contents of the meeting were protected by cabinet confidence “and should not have been public knowledge.”