Another DND official attended RCMP briefings, but took no notes

Little paper trail around case of vice-admiral

Another top defence official who took part in RCMP meetings about Vice-Admiral Mark Norman has admitted to not taking any notes during those briefings.

Jody Thomas, the deputy minister at the Department of National Defence, took part in two RCMP briefings on the Norman case. But the DND has confirmed to Postmedia that, like Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance, Thomas took no notes about what was discussed during the meetings with police.

In an unprecedented move, Vance decided to suspend Norman, then the second-highest-ranking officer in the Canadian military, in January 2017 after senior RCMP officers alleged the naval officer had leaked information about the Liberal government’s decision to stall a project to lease a naval supply ship from a Quebec shipbuilding firm.

In March 2018 Norman was charged with one count of breach of trust in a case that has sparked allegations of political interference by the Liberal government.

Vance testified at a pretrial hearing last week that he didn’t take any notes when senior RCMP briefed him on the matter on Jan. 9, 2017. On the same day, Vance also met with Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and with Gerald Butts, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s principal secretary, and Trudeau’s chief of staff Katie Telford, to discuss the Norman situation. He also had a brief phone call with Trudeau.

However, Vance testified that he took no notes during any of the meetings. Vance also testified he did not have any notes from three other meetings he had with the RCMP about the Norman case after January 2017.

Thomas was with Vance for two meetings with the RCMP, one on Nov. 27, 2017, and another on Jan. 25, 2018, according to government records. “Notes were not taken,” DND said in an email. “Given it was an information brief on a matter for which the deputy minister had no decision-making role, there was no need to take notes.”

Vance also testified he had dinner with Telford and Butts — DND said the three dined on April 26, 2017 — but that Norman was not discussed. Vance also did not have any notes from March 2018 when Norman was criminally charged, and could not recall how he was informed about the charge.

Zita Astravas, a former senior official in the Prime Minister’s Office involved in crisis management on the Norman case, had difficulty recalling at last week’s pretrial hearing whether she had any interactions related to the matter with either Butts or Telford.

The pre-trial hearing is reviewing requests by Norman’s defence team for a trove of documents which the naval officer’s lawyers contend they need in order to mount his defence.

Many of those documents have not been delivered despite a court order for government departments and officials to produce records.

Last week, Norman’s defence team unveiled a list of acronyms and other terms that officials may have used instead of Norman’s name. They contend their use may have thwarted some attempts to find documents.