VICE-ADMIRAL OVERBOARD
Year later, Norman in legal limbo
It was a chilly -11 C in the nation’s capital last November as thousands gathered at the National War Memorial to remember the sacrifice of Canada’s veterans. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and Veterans Affairs Minister Seamus O’Regan, the government’s main representatives at the ceremony, stood at the front of the crowd along with rows of aging veterans, some in wheelchairs. The new governor general, Julie Payette, accompanied Diana Abel, that year’s Silver Cross Mother, representing all those in Canada who’d lost children in the line of duty. With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a summit in Asia, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau represented him among the many dignitaries who laid wreaths just steps from Parliament Hill.
Twenty kilometres away, in the east-end Ottawa suburb of Orléans, Vice-Admiral Mark Norman stood quietly somewhere among a much smaller crowd.
An hour earlier, he had dressed in his naval uniform, put on his medals and made his way to the Orléans Cenotaph near his home. He was relatively anonymous among the Remembrance Day crowd gathered outside the local Legion branch, watching a RCMP pipe band lead a parade of veterans and other marchers to the cenotaph, observing the minute of silence and listening as a bugler played The Last Post. When the ceremony was over Norman left quietly, melting away with the rest of the onlookers.
For the past several years, Norman had been part of the official federal government ceremony commemorating the fallen. But not on this day, and perhaps not ever again.
The second-in-command of the Canadian Armed Forces until a year ago, Norman is now persona non grata at the Ottawa headquarters of the Department of National Defence. He has spent the last 12 months under a cloud of suspicion created by as-yet unsubstantiated RCMP claims that he breached the public trust and provided allegedly secret information to a company the federal government had hired to provide a supply ship to the Royal Canadian Navy.
While Norman stood in the crowd at the Orléans cenotaph, 440 kilometres away at Quebec City the sup- ply ship at the heart of the controversy, the MV Asterix, was being prepared for its sea trials in Gaspé Bay, having been delivered on time and on budget — an extreme rarity in the world of Canadian military procurement.
A federal judge has pointed out that there has been no suggestion that Norman received monetary compensation, or any other “personal advantage,” for what he is alleged to have done. Hundreds of pages of documents offering insight into the RCMP’s investigation of Norman offer no challenge to his apparent motivation: to ensure that, in the face of political considerations and procurement uncertainties, the navy actually received a vessel it sorely needed.
These days the 54-year-old Norman spends most of his time at his home in Orléans. While he is still receiving his military salary, his life is on hold. A year ago the RCMP removed from that home thousands of documents — including many with no conceivable connection to the Asterix, like family photos and medical information about Norman’s wife, Beverly. Due to have been returned to the Normans by Jan. 9 of this year, the RCMP recently sought and were granted an extension to keep hold of the material for another 60 days.
Norman has still never officially been provided the reasoning for his unprecedented removal as vice-chief of the defence staff. He has never received a military hearing on the matter, and there has been no independent examination of the facts of his case. The claims have not been tested by a judge or jury. At this point, it is unclear whether they ever will be.
According to sources close to the case, the RCMP presented the evidence it has gathered to the federal prosecutor’s office last summer; however, the federal prosecutor has laid no charges against Norman or anybody else in relation to this evidence, and the case remains open.
How did the second- incommand of the Canadian Forces end up in limbo for a year, with no end in sight? While Norman declined to comment for this article, Postmedia has compiled this account of events from court records, from documents obtained through the Access to Information law and from a series of interviews with multiple sources in the Depart- ment of National Defence, in the defence industry and involved in or with knowledge of the Norman case.
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 itself a badly needed supply ship. — Ontario Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips
THIS IS NOT AN ISSUE OF NATIONAL SECURITY.
Norman comes from a military family. His father had been an army major-general, but Norman had been drawn to the sea and joined the naval reserves in 1980, when he was 17. Trained as a diesel mechanic, he transferred to the regular naval force five years later, building an unblemished military career over more than three decades that saw him decorated many times over. In 2003 he was given command of HMCS St. John’s, a Halifax-class frigate; six years later he was named commander of Canada’s Atlantic fleet. In June 2011 he was promoted to deputy com- mander of the Royal Canadian Navy, and two years later he had command of the service.
When Norman was appointed to lead the navy it was in dire straits, as the vice-admiral would warn in a 2014 naval business plan which Postmedia obtained via an Access to Information request. “Limited resources, financial and human, and competing priorities continue to test our ability to most effectively and efficiently deliver our mandate,” he wrote, adding he would have to make “some very difficult decisions.”
One of those difficult decisions came in late 2014 when Norman ordered the removal from service of the navy’s on- ly two supply vessels. HMCS Protecteur was a burned-out hulk after being crippled by a fire earlier that year. HMCS Preserver, more than 40 years old, had become unsafe to operate because it was literally rusting away.
The Royal Canadian Navy had been trying to replace its two aging supply ships since 1999, but those efforts kept failing, victims of a lack of political will and of Canada’s infamously ineffective military equipment procurement system.
Supply ships may be the least glamorous vessels in the fleet, but they’re critical. They make sure warships have enough fuel, food and ammunition to continue operating, and without them, a maritime force is limited in how far from its country’s shores it can travel.
Vice- admiral ( retired) Peter Cairns, another former head of the Canadian Navy, would point out in a 2015 essay that the loss of the ships “effectively reduced the navy to a well-armed coast guard; unable to form a task group without the assistance of foreign nations.”
Canada’s navy was put in the embarrassing position of having to strike a deal with Chile and Spain, two nations willing to lease some of their supply ships to Canada, but only for short periods.
In January 2015, the federal government approved a new plan that could provide at least a temporary solution — it would lease a supply ship from a private firm. Proposals for such a stop-gap measure were received from Irving Shipbuilding in Halifax, Seaspan in Vancouver and Davie Shipbuilding in Levis, Que.
The Davie proposal was attractive politically to the Conservatives as the shipyard was located in the riding of Conservative cabinet minister Steven Blaney. With the country about to go into a federal election, the Conservatives hoped to deal with the navy’s supply ship problem while potentially getting votes in Quebec.
The project was valued at $670 million and would see Davie and its affiliates buy a vessel — a commercial container ship launched in 2009 called the Asterix, owned at the time by a Greek shipping concern and sailing under a Liberian flag — converting it into a supply ship to the navy’s specifications, providing a civilian crew for five years and maintaining the ship over the same period.
On the first day of August, 2015, Jason Kenney, the defence minister, announced the government had signed a letter of intent with Davie. Shortly thereafter, Norman began regular email communication with Spencer Fraser, a former RCN officer who headed Federal Fleet, the Davie affiliate that would oversee Project Resolve. In Canada’s small and tightly knit defence community, it’s common for senior military leaders to be in touch with the industry officials whose firms provide the Canadian Forces with equipment. Norman and Fraser had also served together and had known each other socially, meeting from time to time over the years.
Though Davie had purchased the Asterix, which arrived at the company’s Quebec yard in early October 2015, the country was in the middle of a federal election and the crucial next phase of the project — the government approving the conversion — was in political limbo.
On Oct. 15, Canadians elected a Liberal majority. But neither in the navy nor in the federal bureaucracy was the change in government seen as a stumbling block for the project. During the campaign, the Liberals had promised to rebuild the military and reinvigorate shipbuilding. “My sense is that there is little risk of the contract not being supported,” Norman reassured Fraser.
But several weeks later the situation changed. On Nov. 15 Fraser was informed that a member of CFN Consultants, an Ottawa lobbying firm affiliated with one of the Irvings’ partner companies, was predicting that Project Resolve was doomed.
Two days later, a letter from James D. Irving landed on the desks of four members of the new Liberal cabinet: Sajjan, Finance Minister Bill Morneau, and two politicians from Atlantic Canada, Procurement Minister Judy Foote and Treasury Board President Scott Brison.
In his letter, Irving accused the previous federal government of having pursued a sole-source deal with Davie, and claimed his company’s competing proposal was never properly evaluated — a situation he now wanted the ministers to rectify.
The next day Privy Council Office officials had a teleconference with DND procurement staff, asking them who, other than Davie, might be able to provide the navy with an interim supply ship.
A federal cabinet committee met the next day. The outcome: a cabinet decision to put Project Resolve on hold for at least two months.
In the navy, some worried that a temporary delay could turn into an indefinite delay and eventually allow the program to be scuttled.
On Nov. 19, 2015 Fraser emailed Alex Vicefield, head of Inocea, an international shipping conglomerate that owns Davie. The subject line read, “From Mark.” The email contained lines regarding Project Resolve, contained in quotation marks. “Most positive interpretation could be govt just unsure and asking questions; cynical view could be folks manipulating new govt to try to kill it. Not sure what the truth is.” ( All emails in this story are quoted as they were written.)
Fraser also told Davie executives that then- CBC journalist James Cudmore had heard rumours about the Irving letter from somewhere inside the government. “So this could get interesting,” Fraser added.
Officials at Davie saw the delay as a scheme hatched by Brison on behalf of the Irvings. (In statements to Postmedia, Irving has vehemently denied any involvement in the Norman matter or any attempt at political meddling.)
Early in the morning of Nov. 20, Norman sent an email to Fraser telling him that Cudmore had somehow obtained a copy of the Irving letter, “which shows they have been interfering.”
Norman was unhappy with the development. “Irving could trace letter to me… assholes…they couldn’t just leave it alone,” Norman added. “Greedy and self-serving.”
At 5:34 a.m. that morning the CBC published an article by Cudmore, revealing a cabinet committee had decided to delay Project Resolve for two months. Cudmore also reported that Irving had meddled in the decision by sending letters to cabinet ministers.
That evening Norman emailed Fraser to tell him that Trudeau’s office and the Privy Council Office were “having kittens over references to explicit cabinet discussions in Cudmore article. Launching an investigation…UFB.”
“They’ll all be distracted from the actual capability gap as they execute a which ( sic) hunt for who quoted who…..sigh.”
Fraser informed Norman that Davie was preparing to turn up the pressure. The company was going to inform Quebec premier Philippe Couillard that the shipyard would be closed and 1,200 people would be laid off, and that the company planned to sue the federal government.
On Nov. 23, Fraser emailed Vicefield saying Seaspan — the west coast shipyard — had sent a letter of their own to the Liberal government, pointing out that they too had proposed an interim ship but were rejected.
Fraser suggested talking to Cudmore and then-Postmedia columnist Michael Den Tandt about the latest development.
On Nov. 25 both Cudmore and Den Tandt published articles about the Seaspan letter, in which the shipyard claimed its interim supply ship proposal was not properly considered.”
That evening, CBC also published another article by Cudmore about the ballooning costs of the federal government’s shipbuilding strategy, citing briefing materials, which had been classified as secret.
Fraser was very pleased with the new article. “Shock and awe baby!,” he wrote to Norman.
But the vice- admiral wasn’ t impressed. “He’s ( Cudmore) going to draw some really aggressive attention,” Norman wrote. “The source of that document will be investigated by the RCMP and anyone associated with him will be part of their search. This is serious shit.” (Cudmore, now a senior adviser to Defence Minister Sajjan, declined to comment for this story.)
The leak did its job. Couillard phoned Trudeau to tell the prime Minister the delay was unacceptable and was putting Quebec jobs at risk. Trudeau found himself taking questions from journalists about what he would do about the potential layoffs at Davie because of his government’s decision.
The Liberal government was furious and the RCMP were called in to investigate the leak.
On Nov. 30 Sajjan and Foote announced that the government had decided against the two-month delay.
The Ottawa offices of the global communications and lobbying firm Hill + Knowlton are on Metcalfe Street, just two blocks from Parliament Hill and the same distance from the War Memorial in the capital’s compact downtown. In May 2016, they were raided by the RCMP.
The police force soon developed its working theory.
RCMP Corp. Matthieu Boulanger, in charge of the investigation, believed that Norman provided information, alleged to include cabinet confidences, to Fraser. Norman did that, according to the RCMP, “to influence decision-makers within government to adopt his preferred outcome” of providing the Asterix supply ship for the Royal Canadian Navy.
On Nov. 16, 2016 the RCMP launched a surveillance operation against Norman, with a police officer stationed outside Norman’s house in Orléans. The observations were typically mundane: An officer would report the garage door opening and “an unidentified male wearing white pants” entering a car and drove away. ( It was Norman, in uniform, going to work.)
On Monday, January 9, 2017 at 7:22 a.m., seven police officers arrived in three vehicles at Norman’s house. The vice-admiral was off that day and was about to take Beverly, assistant to a veterinarian, to her office.
The officers stayed in the house for six hours. They seized a desktop computer, a laptop, two cellphones and three iPads, one owned by Beverly.
Though the RCMP’s warrant allowed them to seize DND files and related material, the police force, Norman’s camp believes, significantly overstepped its legal parameters by also seizing thousands of pieces of personal effects from the Norman family. Those included family and vacation photos, Beverly’s medical records, her personal texts and her pay stubs.
After the RCMP left, Norman phoned his office, asking his assistant to set up a meeting with his boss, Chief of Defence Staff Jon Vance. He was unaware that even as police were in his home, a senior RCMP officer was already briefing Vance.
Several hours later, Vance’s chief of staff called Norman and informed him that the CDS wanted to see him at 6 p.m. that day.
Norman arrived, unaccompanied, to Vance’s office.
Vance handed Norman a draft notice of his intent to relieve the naval officer of his military duties. “I have compelling, sobering and frightening information,“Vance said, although he provided no details.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself ?” Vance asked.
Given the severity of Vance’s statement, Norman said he wanted time to consult a lawyer.
On Jan. 13, Norman was given a formal letter, suspending him from command. In the letter, Vance wrote without explanation that he had lost confidence in Norman’s ability to command.
There would be no internal hearing, and no formal opportunity for Norman to present his side of the story. The decision was based on the unproven claims that underpinned the RCMP’s search warrant.
The following Monday, Vance’s letter was distrib- uted to various offices at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa. It took only 20 minutes to be leaked to media outlets.
Beyond that, though, Vance ordered a blackout on all information about Norman. Asked about Norman’s removal, Trudeau declined to provide any details. Vance had made the decision, Trudeau said, and his government fully backed its defence chief.
Canada’s second-highestranking military officer was removed from office without a word of explanation.
The lack of information fuelled gossipy theories in political, defence and media circles. Military personnel wondered whether it was related to sexual misconduct. Perhaps Norman was a Russian spy, others mused.
After 10 days of allowing speculation to percolate, Sajjan announced what the government had known all along. “This is not an issue of national security,” the minister said. No other explanation was provided.
On Feb. 23, the highprofile Toronto criminal lawyer Marie Henein, newly famous for her successful defence of former CBC host Jian Ghomeshi, entered the fray on Norman’s behalf. Her client, she said in a statement, “has at all times served his country honourably and with the sole object- ive of advancing the national interest and the protection of Canada.”
Weeks later, Trudeau made a bold prediction: Norman was going to trial. “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 prime minister told journalists.
At National Defence Headquarters, officials began to remove traces of Norman’s existence. An officer phoned the vice-admiral at home and informed him that his personal possessions were being hauled out of his office so a new acting VCDS, Lt.- Gen. Alain Parent, could move in. Plaques and photos were taken off the wall. Some were put in storage, others boxed and sent to Norman’s home by taxi.
The investigation into Norman has been extensive. Police have interviewed more than 30 individuals — staff at Davie and affiliated firms, at the Department of National Defence, at Public Services and Procurement Canada, and a number of federal cabinet ministers. The RCMP obtained nine search warrants, examining Norman’s home, cellphones and computers, Davie’s offices and those of its lobbyists.
While Norman’s corres- pondence with Fraser contained raw language and candid observations, there appears to have been no actual transfer of classified information or cabinet confidences in those messages.
The RCMP did find a Memorandum to Cabinet, marked secret, in the office of Hill + Knowlton official Mersereau, but there is no indication it is connected to Norman. No charges have been laid in relation to the matter against anyone at Hill + Knowlton, and in a statement to Postmedia the firm said none of its officials are under investigation of any kind.
The federal police force has already been warned that its case against Norman may be on shaky ground.
In an April 21 ruling on an application by a group of news organizations including Postmedia to make public the details of the search warrant executed on Norman’s home, Ontario Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips pointed out the problem the RCMP faced: the fact Norman was communicating with industry officials, Phillips said, didn’t mean he was guilty of anything.
“The emails in question are by no means smoking guns,” Phillips said in his ruling.
Phillips also pointed out another possible explanation for Norman’s emails: for decades, Canadian military procurement has been a mess. Norman found himself in the midst of situation where the acquisition of a supply ship the navy badly needed appeared to be headed off the rails due solely to political considerations. The judge specifically noted that none of what Norman did was for financial gain, but was instead to advance ensure well- being of the navy and his sailors.
“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 itself a badly needed supply ship,” Phillips wrote.
Phillips highlighted another potential problem with the RCMP investigation: For a case to stand against Norman, prosecutors will have to prove that the naval officer was the first in leaky Ottawa to have shared any Cabinet confidences in question.
But Postmedia has confirmed the identity of a second source whom the RCMP allege leaked Cabinet confidences. While the RCMP was aware of the second suspect from the beginning of their investigation, their focus has remained on Norman. The second source, an employee of Public Services and Procurement Canada with no link to Norman, has not been charged and is still in his job in Ottawa. He has not responded to Postmedia’s requests for comment.
There is also the possibility a third individual may have been involved in supplying Davie with insider information. In a Nov. 24, 2015 email, Fraser told Norman that an individual he called “the Wolf” had been providing the company with behind-the-scenes information.
Liberal Senator Colin Kenny points out that the details of the Nov. 19 cabinet meeting would have been known initially by dozens of government officials.
“To claim that Mark Norman is the only one with such information is ridicu- lous,” said Kenny. “He appears to me to be the designated fall guy.”
Norman’s supporters remain astonished by the RCMP’s pursuit of the naval officer given that leaks of secret information and cabinet confidences to trusted journalists have been part of the media strategy of every government in memory — including the current one.
“It’s all part of the Ottawa political game,” said retired naval Capt. Kevin Carle, who held senior positions in the media relations branch at Department of National Defence headquarters. “Information is leaked by the government of the day in a controlled method to journalists. No investigations are launched because it’s all sanctioned by the government.”
In the weeks before the raid on Norman’s home, reports indicated construction on the two Joint Support Ships being built at Seaspan in Vancouver had fallen behind schedule, and not for the first time. The cost of the project had grown, and though a DND performance report suggested the ships would be built by early 2021, some doubt that will be the case.
The Asterix, the vessel for which Norman fought, was launched in October and will be the Royal Canadian Navy’s main lifeline for warships at sea for the foreseeable future. There is widespread acknowledgment in the navy — privately, at least — that without Norman’s advocacy for Project Resolve the navy would for years have continued to have no supply capability of its own.
In December, approaching the one-year anniversary of the removal of his number two, Postmedia returned to Vance with questions about the state of the Norman matter.
How long would Norman continue to be suspended from duty? “As a matter of policy, removals from command should be temporary, except in the most exceptional of circumstances, with a decision to continue or cease that removal provided at a later date when all of the information is known and full procedural fairness can be accommodated,” said Vance’s spokesman, Lt.- Col. Jason Proulx.
Did Norman receive a hearing before being removed from command? The spokesman declined to comment, out of deference to what he called an ongoing investigation.
In some Ottawa military circles there is a belief that the government intends to make an example of Norman — that with his legal bills mounting as his state of limbo stretches on indefinitely, his family will at some point be under enough financial stress that the vice-admiral will be forced to resign.
Norman, however, has told friends he isn’t going anywhere.
In May, just before Canadian Forces personnel were to strip his office of his mementoes and awards and send them to his home, Norman phoned defence headquarters and informed officials there to carefully record the process. “I want you to photograph exactly where each of those items are in the office,” Norman told officers. “Because I’m coming back — and they are going back up on the wall where they belong.”
It’s all part of the Ottawa political game. Information is leaked by the government of the day in a controlled method to journalists. No investigations are launched because it’s all sanctioned by the government.
— Retired naval Capt. Kevin Carle