Requests for documents in Mark Norman case still being stalled.

OTTAWA • Even as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s former right-hand man Gerald Butts testified at the justice committee on Wednesday about his role in the Snc-lavalin affair, a lawyer for suspended naval commander Mark Norman was suggesting calling him in as a witness in a criminal case rife with suspicions of political interference.

Counsel for Norman, who is facing a rare breach of trust charge for allegedly leaking cabinet secrets, said at a court appearance Wednesday morning that if key documents aren’t provided to the defence by midmonth, Butts and other key officials could be brought in for cross-examination.

Lawyer Marie Henein argued the government has lagged on providing records the defence requires to make its case. She hasn’t seen “a single document,” she said, after her request in October for communications between the Privy Council Office and Prime Minister’s Office on the topic of Norman, and notes relied upon during witness interviews in the RCMP investigation of Norman.

Some of the documentation that has been offered is “completely and utterly useless,” she said, detailing PCO lawyer Paul Shuttle’s submission of an inch-thick pile of records that are already public, such as the government’s access-to-information manual. “How is that possibly responsive to the request?” Justice Heather Perkins McVey quipped.

Last month, Norman’s lawyers had identified five “priority” individuals whose records the government would need to produce ahead of March 25, when hearings for an abuse-of-process motion are set to begin. That’s when Henein was preparing to argue why the case should be thrown out of court.

The priority individuals are Butts, Trudeau himself, his chief of staff Katie Telford, his former issues manager Zita Astravas (now chief of staff to Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan) and top civil servant Michael Wernick.

Derek Rasmussen, a lawyer for the government, said he was making documents from those individuals available to the judge later on Wednesday to review. After a similar review, the Crown said documents from three other witnesses, not on the priority list, were ready to be provided to the defence.

But Henein said she was “concerned that there has been a lack of responsiveness to the court order and the subpoenas,” and that the defence had been put in a “difficult position” of staring down court dates at the end of the month without having seen a single relevant document.

With Norman next to her, in uniform, Henein asked the judge to reconvene court on March 18 for another update. If substantive records haven’t been provided by then, Henein said, she plans to propose that Butts, Wernick, and other relevant officials be called in as witnesses. That would delay the abuse-of-process motion.

“This is a court of law. Vice-admiral Mark Norman is on trial here,” Henein said. “They have an obligation to be responsive. It is not an option.”

Astravas had already been called to testify in January, and it became clear from her answers to Henein’s questions that in her case, the search for records relevant to Norman had been incomplete.

Former justice minister Jody Wilson-raybould, during bombshell testimony last week, named all of the priority individuals except Astravas as agents of attempted “political interference” who pressured her last fall to intervene in a criminal prosecution against Quebec engineering firm Snc-lavalin.

Henein is expected to allege political interference in the Norman case, too, and lawyers have already raised it in their attempts to obtain documentation from the department of justice. After Norman lawyer Christine Mainville argued that it appeared the government was trying to influence prosecutors, the Crown was required to hand unredacted communications between prosecutors and PCO lawyers to the defence last month.