Norman deserves more than ‘Sorry’

One could forgive Royal Canadian Navy Vice- Admiral Mark Norman a moment of dizziness. His world has been turned upside down in recent weeks. Or perhaps, better to say right-side up.

The admiral was under suspicion of having leaked confidential cabinet information to a shipbuilding company, Davie, which had a contract to convert a civilian cargo ship into a badly needed naval supply vessel. In 2015, the leaks that came to be blamed on Norman helped Davie lobby the newly elected Liberal government to not cancel the project, which some in cabinet ( possibly due to party links to the Irving family and its rival shipbuilding interests) reportedly had pushed to do. When it became public that the Liberals might renege on the deal, they backed down. But the government was determined to nail the leaker to the wall.

The admiral was relieved of duty as vice- chief of the defence staff in 2017, at which point the prime minister made some astonishingly prejudicial statements about the case, including predicting it would result in a trial (Public Services and Procurement Minister Carla Qualtrough later admitted that the prime minister’s comments were “not the best framing of words”). A full year later, he was charged with one count of breach of trust. After months of pretrial work, where Norman’s defence team credibly accused the federal government of dragging its feet in disclosing vital documents, the case suddenly collapsed last week, after the Crown said new evidence ( discovered by the defence) revealed there was little chance of a conviction. He walked out of the courthouse a free man.

Since then, the government has said it will pay his hefty legal bills, for which it had previously refused to even provide loans. The military has said he can return to active duty at once. And this week, the House unanimously supported a Conservative motion apologizing to the admiral and his family for the entire ordeal.

It was a nice moment. And deserved. The admiral’s life has changed, for the better, in mere days.

But he’s still owed something beyond an apology — he’s owed an explanation. All Canadians are. We may be waiting a while on that one.