Justin's Other Albatross

This one:

It was April 6, 2017, and the prime minister was taking questions from journalists. One of them was about Bev’s husband, Vice-Admiral Mark Norman.

Mark Norman was in the kitchen when an astonished Bev called out to him. “I think the prime minister was just talking about you.”

Three months earlier a team of RCMP officers had raided the Normans’ home as part of an investigation into an alleged leak of the Liberal government’s plans to pause a project to procure a supply ship for the Royal Canadian Navy. The federal police force believed Norman had given confidential information to the shipbuilder, Davie, as well as to a CBC journalist in an attempt to prevent the Liberals from scuttling the deal.

The allegations were a working RCMP theory — the raid was part of their ongoing investigation — but when the police briefed Canada’s top soldier, Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance, ...

(Sidebar: this Jonathan Vance.)

... he had quickly responded by suspending Norman from his military duties. It would later emerge that Vance had discussed the matter with Trudeau and top advisors in the Prime Minister’s Office including then-principal secretary Gerald Butts and chief of staff Katie Telford. ...

(Sidebar: this Katie Telford.)

Shortly after 6:30 p.m. Norman was ushered into Vance’s office. With Vance was John Forster, deputy minister of the Department of National Defence. The RCMP had already briefed the two men on their allegations against Norman and informed them of the raid. After hearing from the RCMP earlier that day, Vance held separate meetings to brief political officials, including one with Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and one with Prime Minister’s Office staff including Telford and Butts. Vance also had a brief phone call with Trudeau to confirm that the prime minister was aware of the situation.

However, Vance told Norman he couldn’t discuss the details of what the RCMP had revealed to him, other than that the information was “compelling, sobering and frightening.”

Forster hadn’t acknowledged Norman when the naval officer entered the room. The deputy minister didn’t look up or make eye contact, Norman recalled, and was fidgeting in his chair, looking at his BlackBerry. “I immediately concluded he was the dedicated witness to whatever it was that was going to happen,” Norman said. Postmedia could not reach Forster for comment. DND said Forster was at the meeting because Norman, as vice-chief, reported to both Vance and the deputy minister. ...

With the release of the letter, Vance ordered a blackout on all information about Norman. The Canadian Forces refused to say why the vice-admiral had been removed, when Norman was given Vance’s letter, or whether Norman was still serving and, if so, in what job or capacity. It also refused to explain why it couldn’t answer such basic questions. Vance would later say he couldn’t provide any information about Norman due to “privacy considerations.”

Vance, meanwhile, had left the country — but the military wouldn’t say where he had gone or why, or even when he’d departed. 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. ...

(Sidebar: all of Justin compensated Vance for - see above sidebar.)

The other stress Norman faced was the growing financial burden for his legal defence. He and his family lived a comfortable life and his $265,000 salary from the Canadian Forces was significant. But taking on the unlimited public-funded resources of government prosecutors requires money, and lots of it. Potential witnesses had to be found and interviewed. Access to Information requests had to be filed to try to obtain documents. Even getting basic documents from the government would turn into an ordeal that only served to create more work and drive up costs.

Norman applied to have his legal bills covered through a fund designed to pay lawyer’s fees for federal public servants who, as a result of their job, found themselves in court.

He was shocked by the response he received. Not only was he rejected for such funding, but DND had already determined he was guilty.

At that point Norman had not been charged. DND sources told Postmedia that the department has never conducted a separate investigation into the Norman case; it had accepted without question the RCMP allegations. Deputy minister John Forster, who had been with Vance when he suspended the officer, had made the decision in conjunction with a justice department advisor. Sajjan later defended Forster’s decision, adding that it was the right one based on the information available.

“What was really disturbing was not that they said ‘No,’” Norman said. “That was disappointing. The disturbing part of it was the bias that was explicit in the decision.”

To deal with his legal fees Norman took out a large line of credit with his $600,000 house as collateral. He borrowed money from friends and supporters.

Unbeknownst to him, a retired army colonel in Vancouver had read Postmedia’s report about the government rejecting his request for assistance with his fees and decided to set up a GoFundMe page to help the naval officer. Lee Hammond didn’t know Norman well, but had met him while working at DND headquarters in Ottawa. The former army officer was struck with the inequality of an individual facing off against the full force of government. Hammond set up the GoFundMe with an initial goal of $50,000. He made the first donation, followed by contributions from some non-military friends.

 “My real goal is to give the guy a chance to defend himself and, in today’s society, that means having a lawyer to fight for you,” Hammond explained. “Paying for top legal advice is the kind of thing that can bankrupt you.” ...

Evidence of Norman as a fall guy:

In fact, the RCMP had information implicating an alleged second suspect in the leak. The police force had seized a Memorandum to Cabinet — a document marked ‘secret’ — and a slide deck related to the Liberal’s cabinet committee meeting on the Asterix deal from the office of Brian Mersereau, a top official with the public relations and lobbying firm Hill+Knowlton Strategies. The company had Davie Shipbuilding as one of its major clients. The police also seized an email to Mersereau from Matthew Matchett, a senior official with Public Services and Procurement Canada.

In the email Matchett told Mersereau he was going to drop off some material at the Hill and Knowlton offices. “I got everything — the motherload (sic),” Matchett wrote in his email.

Strangely, the RCMP hadn’t charged Matchett and the government had continued to allow him to work as a senior official at Procurement Canada. (The government only suspended Matchett after Norman’s defence team publicly disclosed his name and alleged role in court documents. He would be charged with one count of breach of trust in February 2019. Matchett has pleaded not guilty, and has not responded to Postmedia’s numerous attempts to contact him.)

Let's not forget Scott Brison:

Central to Henein’s allegations was the claim that Brison, a Nova Scotia MP, was close to Atlantic Canada’s powerful Irving family, whose shipbuilding firm had submitted its own proposal to provide a supply ship. Norman’s lawyers alleged that Brison intervened to scuttle the Asterix project on the Irving’s behalf. ...

The government worked  against Norman:

In mid-December 2018, Henein further expanded on her political interference theory when she filed an exhibit consisting of emails between a Crown prosecutor and legal counsel in the Privy Council Office. The emails show the Privy Council lawyer asking for updates on who the Crown has been identified as potential witnesses, what was discussed in judicial pre-trial meetings and what the defence planned to argue in its pre-trial motions. “The nature and tone” of the emails were especially problematic, Henein said, given that Trudeau had a history of commenting publicly on the case.

The pre-trial hearings were mainly focused on attempts by Norman’s legal team to obtain federal documents they argued were needed for the naval officer’s defence. Known as a third-party records application, Henein and fellow lawyer Christine Mainville relentlessly used the process to argue that the government was interfering in Norman’s ability to defend himself, alleging everything from obstructing disclosure to having justice department lawyers inappropriately coach the prosecution’s witnesses. ...

And this moment:

On Dec. 18, 2018 the officer, whose name is protected by a publication ban because of fears of professional reprisal, testified that his superior told him Norman’s name was deliberately not used in internal files — meaning any search for records about Norman would come up empty.

The witness said he was processing an access-to-information request about Norman in 2017 that returned no results. When he sought clarification, the officer testified, his supervisor — a brigadier general — smiled and told him: “Don’t worry, this isn’t our first rodeo. We made sure we never used his name. Send back the nil return.”

“He seemed proud to provide that response,” the witness said.

The witness told court he has no relationship with Norman, and came forward only because it’s “the right thing to do.”

“It just doesn’t seem right, the way the whole situation kind of played out, when I was thinking back about it,” the witness said. “I just wanted to make it known, whether it’s relevant or not.”

As the witness testified, Norman said, he could hear an audible response ripple throughout the courtroom. “It was a shocking piece of testimony. There was a lot of people sucking air through their teeth when that happened.”

Justice Heather Perkins-McVey described the testimony as “very disturbing.

(source)

Also - Justin's previous albatross:

The truth.

She says it’s true — the actions of the Liberal Prime Minister should be “of great concern for many Canadians, across the country.”

She says, truthfully, that Justin Trudeau has acted in a way that is “questionable.”

She says what happened her is “a wake-up call” — and, while she’s not happy about what Justin Trudeau did to her, she’s running again.

And — when, say, a Prime Minister Andrew Scheer gives her the legal green light to do so — she plans to tell all.

She plans to reveal what really happened “behind the veil” in Trudeau’s Ottawa.