Vice-admiral takes aim
COURT DOCUMENTS PUT BRISON UNDER SPOTLIGHT
Lawyers for Vice-Admiral Mark Norman have taken aim at a key federal cabinet minister with new allegations about Treasury Board President Scott Brison’s links to the powerful Irving family and his role in the government’s plan to delay a supply-ship contract awarded to an Irving rival.
In court documents released Friday, Norman’s legal team alleges that witnesses have contradicted Brison’s claim that a leak about a plan to delay the contract with Davie Shipbuilding hurt the government’s ability to review the deal. Norman’s lawyers are also challenging Brison’s claim that an ad hoc government committee meeting convened at the time was examining the integrity of the contracting process.
In the documents, Norman’s lawyer, Marie Henein, points to statements federal bureaucrats made to the RCMP. “Other witnesses statements contradict Brison on these key points, namely that the leaks did not impact the government decision to proceed with the Davie contract, and that the concerns at the Ad Hoc Committee were around the integrity of the contracting process,” her submission to the court alleges. “Rather, civil servants who attended and took personal notes of the Ad Hoc Committee meeting stated to the RCMP that a key concern was not having a satisfactory communications strategy for the Liberals to explain proceeding with a contract negotiated by the previous Conservative government.
“The request for the delay appears to have had nothing to do with the integrity of the contract for Canadians but rather with political messaging,” Henein alleges.
The allegations against Brison have not been tested in court; nor have those made against Norman, who faces one criminal charge of breach of trust over the shipbuilding leak.
In the fall of 2015, then-CBC journalist James Cudmore reported the newly elected Liberal government planned to put on hold a contract under which Davie would provide a supply ship to the navy. In the wave of resulting publicity the government backed down on the delay, but asked the RCMP to investigate the alleged leak, claiming the information was protected as a cabinet confidence, making its release illegal without authorization.
Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance suspended Norman as second-in-command of the Canadian Forces in January 2017 after the RCMP raided Norman’s house, some 14 months into their investigation. In March 2018 he was charged.
The documents released Friday, after arguments by lawyers representing several media organizations, had been filed in recent weeks in support of Henein’s efforts to access a trove of records that the government considers classified. Henein says she needs the material, which includes memoranda and correspondence, to mount Norman’s defence.
Central to Henein’s allegations is the claim that Brison, a Nova Scotia MP, is close to Atlantic Canada’s Irving family, whose shipbuilding firm had submitted its own proposal to provide a supply ship.
The previous Conservative government had rejected the Irving bid in favour of Davie in Quebec. On Nov. 17, 2015, Irving Shipbuilding’s co-CEO James Irving sent a letter to four Liberal cabinet ministers including Brison, asking them to reconsider Irving’s supply ship pitch.
Two days later, at a meeting of cabinet’s ad hoc procurement committee, government ministers agreed to suspend the Davie project.
Norman’s lawyers have claimed that both Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and Judy Foote, then minister responsible for procurement, were in favour of moving ahead with Davie, as were senior bureaucrats.
But Brison intervened just before the deadline, Norman’s lawyers allege, advocating for putting the deal on hold.
The Irvings have consistently denied any attempt to undercut a rival shipbuilder by political interference.
On Friday Bruce Cheadle, Brison’s director of communications, said the minister was involved in the matter in his capacity as Treasury Board president, which includes expenditure review and “the challenge function to ensure due diligence in government contracting.”
“Minister Brison’s only engagement with Irving Shipbuilding or its representatives during this time was being copied on the letter sent to other ministers, to which he did not respond,” Cheadle said.
But Norman’s lawyers have requested through the court any communications between Brison and Irving in November 2015. Henein argues that such a request is valid “given Minister Brison’s inconsistent accounts of his handling of the Irving letter and his close relationship with the Irving family.”
“Lobbying records show that Minister Brison has been lobbied by Jim Irving on numerous occasions since he became minister,” Henein claims.
In the documents, Norman’s lawyers also questioned how the RCMP’s investigation had unfolded, arguing it has been politicized.
The Crown has asserted that Norman was not acting in the “public good” during the September 2014 to October 2015 period in which the supply ship project was developed and dealt with by government. But police have not interviewed any members of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, which was in power at the time.
“Indeed the politicization of the case is highlighted by the fact that, despite the prosecution’s theory of the public good and the fact that the majority of the time period covered by the information is during the Conservative era, the RCMP failed to interview a single witness from that political government,” Norman’s lawyers allege. “It has chosen to only interview Liberal ministers and political staffers, and to adopt the political narrative advanced by the Trudeau government.”
Norman’s defence team has made wide-ranging requests for government disclosure, issuing subpoenas to seven government departments and agencies. Robert MacKinnon, a Justice Department lawyer representing the federal departments, said government staff have been working “flat out” for five weeks and have collected the bulk of the material — estimated to total 135,000 documents.
“It’s a very complex process ... very labour intensive,” MacKinnon told court Friday. He emphasized that everyone recognizes that 135,000 documents will inundate the trial with paperwork, and they are working to narrow the scope.
“We asked both counsel to supply us with a list of their priority documents, and they have,” he said. “We’ve collected virtually all of those.”
The third-party records hearing, set to begin Dec. 12 and run for five days, will consider which documents are relevant to the trial and should be disclosed to the defence. The government has the power to withhold documents by declaring them cabinet secrets, but the Crown has said it will let the judge decide what should be disclosed.
Outside the Ottawa courthouse Friday, Norman said he is confident that the court will make the correct decision on releasing the documents required by his legal team. “We look forward to being able to have access to material that we believe is fundamental and essential to my defence,” he said.
Asked whether the documents would prove Norman’s innocent, Christine Mainville, one of the viceadmiral’s lawyers, said that is not the issue at this point.
“This is an application for third-party records,” she said. “It’s not about the merits of the case, it’s not about adjudicating guilt or innocence. There will be a time and place for that. We look forward to that time and place.”
Norman’s trial is expected to take place in the summer of 2019, in the run-up to the next federal election.