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May 14, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:04:51
The Truth About Vice-Admiral Mark Norman
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*BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom and hope you're doing well.
So another scandal has been enveloping Justin Trudeau's government.
This of course is the scandal regarding the charging and handling of Vice Admiral Mark Norman's breach of trust case.
It's a complicated mess, but I'm going to break it down for you so that it is blindingly, if not terrifyingly, illuminating.
We'll do a bit of a deep dive here so I can put this issue in its historical context.
Let's look at the end of the Second World War.
At that point, Canada actually had the third largest navy in the world, and Canada actually even had an aircraft carrier up until the early 1970s.
Now, of course, the Canadian fleet was essential in keeping the Atlantic supply routes open which was essential of course to fighting hitler and uh... the nazis during the second world war so a noble and Powerful role was played in maintaining the freedom of the world, at least to some degree, and now that's all changed.
70 years after the end of the Second World War, the Canadian Navy has now been reduced to renting vessels from Chile.
Yes, it's quite tragic.
Now, of course, the money that used to go into actually having national defense has been poured into things like multiculturalism, and billions of dollars a year into bilingualism, and of course we have the welfare state and socialized medicine, but we don't actually have a military in any particular way so this is of concern of course the military is there to defend the country and also to provide influence in the world So, of course, with regards to the Navy, you have local ships, right?
Ships which would just be patrolling offshore, and then you have more deep water vessels.
Now, if you want to have vessels out there in the ocean, then you have to have maintenance vessels, because if you're close to shore, you can go in and get your food, and you can get your water, and you can get your fuel, and so on pretty easily, but you need to be refueled out at sea.
You need a maintenance vessel.
So Canada had... I don't know what this has got to say.
It had two.
It had two vessels, and they became unserviceable quite rapidly.
Well, one was not rapid, one was.
So one just kind of rusted out.
It had been around for so long, or maybe it hadn't been properly maintained, but it just kind of rusted out.
The other one, ironically called the HMCS Protecteur, had a terrible fire and burned itself into a shell of its former self, and therefore Canada had no fleet maintenance vessels, the last two had gone out at the window, and so it could not actually maintain a navy that went more than about 12 feet offshore.
So in November 2014, while giving testimony at a parliamentary defense committee, Vice Admiral Mark Norman gave a grim assessment of the navy's capabilities, and I quote, The retirement of current refuelers and the delay in the construction of joint support ships have led to capacity issues, The retirement of current refuelers and the delay in the construction of joint support ships have led Canada is unable to support and maintain those ships at sea if it needs to deploy them elsewhere.
So there you have it.
I mean you can sort of think of it as those planes that refuel other planes in the air.
How are you going to solve this?
You need two, I guess, very complicated modern vessels in order for Canada to have any kind of real Navy.
And in the East, Irving Shipbuilding, part of the multi-billion dollar family fortunes of the Irving family in Canada, Irving Shipbuilding and C-SPAN in the West were engaged.
And depending on who you ask, and again the sources to all of this, for the first time the sources to all of this will be below, There was going to be a 30 plus month procurement process and then, of course, whether that's built in or takes time to build the ships afterwards, we've got three to six years to replace these supply ships.
So all the ships require replenishment, and since you didn't have these supply ships, Canada would be unable to maintain anything more than a coastal force.
Now, of course, remember, everybody knows this.
It's in the newspapers, it's all over the place, so if you want to smuggle, if you want to do whaling, if you want to do something untoward offshore of Canada, you know that Canada hasn't got a navy.
This is Bad!
If you're going to have a Navy, it needs to be able to do more than patrol Center Island off Toronto.
So, it's not good.
At all.
So, senior officials in the Department of National Defense, as well as then Chief of Defense Staff Tom Lawson, recommended a 30-plus month process to begin upgrading the Navy's supply capacity.
Now, this would allow Canadian shipyards such as, as I mentioned, Irving in Nova Scotia and Seaspan in British Columbia to submit bids on the project.
Now, senior Liberals, much like they were good friends with SNC-Lavalin, are fairly close, some of them unfriendly, to the Irving shipyard or the Irving family.
Now, neither Vice Admiral Norman nor Jason Kenney, who was then Minister of National Defense, now is the Premier of Alberta, neither of these guys wanted to park the Navy for at least three years.
Now an alternative program that was supported by Vice Admiral Norman would convert a container ship into a supply vessel and then would enter it into service in January of 2018.
This was years ahead of the commissioning of entirely new vessels and this was actually achieved On time and on budget, which is really quite remarkable for this kind of stuff.
Just for those who are vaguely interested in this, I have had experience in military procurement before I was this guy running the world's biggest philosophy show.
I was a software entrepreneur and I built software to help companies minimize environmental impacts of groundwater and VOCs and all of that.
And air pollution as well.
And I worked with both the Canadian and the US military in the submitting of proposals for this kind of stuff.
So, I do have some experience in military procurement.
It's just one of these odd little coincidences that helps me with this kind of stuff.
So, Vice Admiral Norman recommended the government go with this proposal from Davy Shipbuilding in Quebec.
And so the Conservative government, this is back in the days before the Liberals, they launched negotiations with this Davey Shipyard in June 2015, but they also changed federal procurement rules to allow a contract without competitive bids, right?
So most times when you have work that needs to be done, you put out what's called an RFP, a request for a proposal, and then a whole bunch of companies will put in their proposals, and then you'll invite them in for presentations, you'll negotiate, and you'll end up choosing one.
Now in this case, They changed the rules to allow a contract without.
Now, when I first heard of this, I thought, hmm, that's not particularly good, but given that this was far faster and far cheaper than what was the alternate proposal, it actually does seem to be kind of a decent thing.
And I just sort of wanted to point out, when you think about this from a larger context, and I will continue to do that over the course of this presentation, it is a little odd that taxpayers attack so much money for the military, and then the military outsources so much.
I mean, it just seems kind of odd.
It's like you donate to me to run a philosophy show and I say, well, I'm going to outsource all the philosophy.
It's like, it seems a bit odd to me.
So Kenny, again now the Premier of Alberta, said, and I quote, it was clear that the Davy proposal was the only way to get the necessary equipment as quickly as possible.
In other words, to actually have a Navy for a couple of years.
Now, after reviewing Norman's recommendation about the Davy conversion rather than the bunch of new ships that would take half a decade or so, Kenny took the proposal to Cabinet and was given approval to fast-track the purchase.
He later said, quote, it turned out to be the right call because it came in on budget and on time.
Now I actually started recording this yesterday and didn't complete it for a variety of reasons and coincidentally and usefully enough it just came out this morning that it has been revealed that Vice Admiral Norman was allowed to discuss, communicate with, negotiate with The Davy Shipyards.
And that's very, very important, as we will see in a few minutes.
So, in July 2015, the Conservative government enters into an agreement with Chantier-Davy Shipbuilding in Quebec to convert and lease a civilian ship as a temporary naval supply vessel.
The deal is not final.
November 4th, 2015, Justin Trudeau and his cabinet are sworn in.
Now, they have a majority government.
November 20th, CBC writer James Cudmore reports that the liberals have put the 700 million dollar project on hold.
Now that is very, very interesting.
So it had been negotiated, it was far faster, it was going to come in years ahead of schedule, much, much cheaper.
But, you know, when you're a government in general, this is not a liberal or conservative thing, but when you're a government in general, The king gives out gifts.
That's how he gets the allegiance of the aristocrats.
So when you're the government, you want to be able to hand out big plum, especially multi-hundred billion, sorry, hundred million dollar contracts.
That's what you want to do.
It's a wonderful thing.
Everyone comes and kisses the ring.
You get a lot of influence, a lot of power handing out taxpayer money.
Well, usually it's the money leveraged from the future tax receipts of the largely unborn serfs of modern democracy, the babies, the national debt.
But you want to be able to do this.
Now, if this is already done and it was sole source, which means it wasn't open to competitive bidding, well, that's not good for you.
You want to be able to hand that contract out yourself.
So his article, James Cutmore, includes key details from a cabinet committee meeting the previous day when the decision was made to put this project on hold.
The Vice Admiral Norman was allowed to speak to, to negotiate with, to keep up to speed this Davy Shipbuilding who had offered this conversion project.
So, this leak detailed the 2015 cabinet meeting decision shortly after the liberals won this majority election victory to halt the Divi resupply project that was already underway.
Now, this is really, really important.
It's already underway.
And so what that means, of course, if you get a 700 million dollar project, it was slightly less than that, but just for the sake of rounding up, then you hire people, you start ordering the materials, you reserve the supply, you reserve that, and what happens is you don't take other contracts.
You don't take Other contracts.
If you are invited to speak at a bunch of places, whoever you say can come speak with you means you can't go speak anywhere else that day or that couple of days if it's a while of travel.
So once you start these projects, there are usually very strict and stern cancellation clauses built into the contract.
In other words, if you reserve these guys for, in this case, like, what is it, a year and a half, two years, or whatever?
If you reserve these guys and they put a lot of money out into getting people ready to do the project and ordering the materials, then if you cancel, they're out a huge amount of money.
Plus, they've already said no to a bunch of other business because they're already engaged with you, and that's important.
Now, the reason for the change, why did the Liberals put this project on hold?
So the rival shipyard, JD Irving, had written to ask that the original sole-source contract be opened to request-for-proposal competition.
Now, Kenny said the department and the CDS took the position they wanted a 36-month process, a lengthy competition that would allow Irving and C-SPAN to make bids, but the Navy desperately needed a supply ship and I wasn't going to allow a bureaucratic demand to get in the way.
I've already got a solution.
It's already done and dusted.
Now, of course, my guess is that the Irving shipyard had already contacted the conservative government when they heard about this and said, we want in, we want in, make it an open competitive bid.
The conservative government said, no, no, no, we've got the sole source, this is how it's going to work.
But the Irving shipyard, I'm sure, would have contacted the liberals and had more traction with them.
So, after a few weeks, the Liberals demand that the RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, investigate the leak.
This demand comes from the Privy Council office.
Now, the Privy Council office is the right arm to the Prime Minister's office, which supports and implements what the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, wants.
Now, this is a remarkable thing, because we say, oh, leaks are bad, leaks are bad, leaks are bad.
But they're everywhere, all the time.
Ottawa is rampant with leaks.
I mean, there would be no... How many times have you... An unnamed source, you know, like some... A senior official that was... A senior official close to this investigating... You get all this stuff, all the time.
And particularly with the Department of Defense.
It's crazy.
I mean, if everyone who leaked was prosecuted, Well, I mean, there'd be no government, there'd be no media.
So yeah, leaks are bad, but they're everywhere.
And the idea that you are going to criminally prosecute someone, or in this case, two people, for a supposed leak is, I mean, as far as I can tell, it's unprecedented in Canadian history.
So this is really, really something.
Leaks happen all the time.
The cops aren't called.
It's just something you have to deal with and manage, right?
Now, by November 30th, the Liberals approved the supply ship contract.
Now, there could be a wide variety of reasons for that.
The fact that it was leaked, or the fact that they looked, and as far as I've read, there was huge penalties for quitting on the deal, and so they just went ahead with it, but Obviously they were pretty angry about this, because they're calling the cops on a regular leak.
And this is very interesting, because if the leak went from the Vice Admiral... I don't know, right?
Nobody knows.
Because the case has been stayed.
Not dropped, but stayed.
If the leak went from the Vice Admiral to the shipyards, and then someone at the shipyards talked, then, I mean, it's just, I don't know.
And he was permitted to speak with them about what was going on.
So, Vice Admiral Mark Norman, former commander of the Navy, right, he was put on leave, has been accused of leaking Cabinet secrets on 12 separate occasions, mostly to the Davies shipyard, and 11 of these leaks occurred under the Conservatives, one under the new Liberal government.
So, yeah, almost all of these leaks were prior to the last election when the Conservatives were in power.
So, Norman was authorized to share information and Cabinet had approved the plan.
So, it's hard to see how implementing Cabinet approval with their explicit permission to share information with the Davies shipyard, how this is Illegal is beyond comprehension.
So, everyone's tossing around this breach of trust term.
Now, remember, I'm not a lawyer, but I can look things up on the internet, and common law is not too confusing.
So, breach of trust charges generally revolve around a public figure in pursuit of some personal benefit, right?
Some corruption, some profit, some, you know, they're going to build you a cottage or whatever, right?
Now, this has been quite the opposite for Vice Admiral Mark Norman, I mean, look at what's happened with him trying to desperately get the ships that he needs to actually have a navy.
I mean, he's in charge of the navy.
He's been doing it for close to four decades.
He started out as a diesel mechanic.
I mean, this guy cares a lot about the navy, and I don't think it's all too shocking that he thinks that the navy should actually be able to go to sea, you know, rather than just sail around the coast, right?
Navy should be able to go to sea.
We need the supply ship.
Here's a way to get it without all of these massive delays and overruns and so on.
So yeah, guy in charge of the Navy actually wants a Navy and is working to get it.
Now, the breach of trust also requires proof of criminal intent beyond reasonable doubt, right?
So if you do something and it's in pursuit of the public good and you have no criminal intent, it doesn't seem to work at all.
Cabinet leaks happen regularly in Ottawa.
The police are not called.
Norman is, as far as I can tell, the first person to be prosecuted in this manner for a potential leak or an alleged leak.
Now this all, I mean, escalated fairly quickly to searching the vice-admiral's house as well as putting him under surveillance.
Surveillance!
For... Ugh.
Ugh, that's crazy.
There were other raids as well.
It didn't just raid the guy's house.
The offices of the Davey Shipyard and affiliate companies as well as lobbying firms that worked for the shipyard and so on.
I mean, this was a hammer blow from the awesome, mighty, terrible, and terrifying power of the state for a potential leak.
Come on.
There's another federal bureaucrat who's also facing the same charges.
Now, the leak, of course, could have happened at multiple points, even if we assume that it was, in fact, a leak.
There's lots of different ways it could have gotten out.
So in January of 2016, a federal public servant who attended secret cabinet meetings concerning the shipbuilding contract reports to the RCMP that electoral considerations were front and center as successive governments approved the project, right?
So this is all well understood.
It's one of the reasons why military procurement contracts in the United States are all over the place, every single state.
It's just a way, it's vote buying.
Look, I'm not saying that you don't need a Navy.
Yeah, you need a Navy.
You need an air force and with global warming apparently Canada's gonna get a whole lot more coastline.
So yeah, you need a navy.
But the way that it's done has a lot to do with regional needs, voting preferences, it has a lot to do with lobbying, and I remember once going to a contractor, let me be as vague as possible, I remember once going to a contractor with a guy I worked with, and this is a contractor that provided services to the military many years ago,
We were doing one of these RFP presentations and he was looking, he said, look at the parking lot here, look at all these, look at all these cars, look at all these expensive, look, you got a Mercedes, you got a Lexus, look at all these expensive cars.
You think these are coming just from salaries?
I thought at the time, well, that's rather cynical.
I'm not sure that I feel that this way.
Now this is important, right?
So we'll get into that.
I know this is skipping around a little bit in time, but I'm trying to sort of follow a theme here so that the timeline is to me is less important than the principles.
Obviously I'm running a philosophy show.
So as Norman begins his defense, his lawyers report that the RCMP never interviewed him or sought documents from anyone involved in the Harper government.
That's, I mean, that's astonishing.
That's beyond astonishing.
They never interviewed.
Norman, they never interviewed or sought documents from anyone involved in the Harper government.
So remember, the vast majority of the leaks were from the time when the Harper government was in power.
So why wouldn't you interview the guy?
Did you leak?
Was it a leak?
Why don't you interview anyone involved in the Harper government and say, was this guy authorized to communicate this information?
Come on!
So Marie Hennon, she is the Elvis head goddess of Canadian law.
She recently revealed that her staff had conducted their own investigations, including Hopper era people, right?
So we'll get into this in more detail, but basically the government spent a year and a half stalling on documents or delivering heavily redacted documents or delivering documents that were already in the public domain, which is completely bizarre.
under discovery rules but so I think she eventually gave up on waiting for the government to deliver documents some of which it's reported actually when they were finally delivered helped exonerate the guy which is why the charges were stayed so she I think she gave up on waiting for the government and just started doing her own investigation and then she ended up turning over these documents which helped get the charges stayed so that's not at all how things should work So this is a foundational question.
How could Vice Admiral Norman be guilty of violating public trust if he was merely following through on a process that already had cabinet approval and for which he was authorized to speak to the shipyard?
That's just bizarre.
It's already been approved.
He's permitted to speak to the shipyard.
Oh no!
He leaked secrets to the shipyard.
The idea that Norman could be guilty of a crime, a crime!
He was facing, I mean the statute is up to 14 years in prison, he was facing up to 5 years in prison.
That he could be guilty of a crime in discussing the deliberations of an ad hoc cabinet committee on defense procurement is so absurd that it became clear very early that this charge could not surmount the evidentiary bar.
So the Privy Council Office, this is the right hand of the PMO, which is the implementer for the Prime Minister, subsequently investigated and discovered six separate leaks from the single committee meeting in question.
And also that 73 people knew about its outcome.
Six separate leaks, 73 people knew about its outcome, but they're going to get this guy!
I mean, it's terrible, absolutely terrible stuff.
Okay, so let's just look a little bit at the breach of trust.
This is how the statute works.
Every official who, in connection with the duties of his office, commits fraud or a breach of trust is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years, whether or not the fraud or breach of trust would be an offense if it were committed in relation to a private person.
This has to be related to the office.
So what are the elements of defence?
The Crown should prove the following.
1.
The accused is an official.
The accused was acting in connection with the duties of his or her office.
The accused breached the standard of responsibility and conduct demanded of him or her by the nature of the office.
The conduct of the accused represented a serious and marked departure from the standards expected of an individual in the accused's position of public trust.
So if you're going to charge one person it has to be something that only he or she is doing and it would be unthinkable for anyone else to do it.
And again, I'm not saying this guy leaked.
I don't mind.
But in Ottawa, as in all governments and particularly in defense areas, leaks are just ridiculously common.
And the accused, right, this is the element of the offense, the accused acted with the intention to use his or her public office for a purpose other than the public good, for example, for a dishonest, partial, corrupt or oppressive purpose.
So, if Vice Admiral Norman, and I'm not saying he did, but if he had fulfilled all these other standards, he was still doing it so that the Navy could actually have ships that went out to sea.
He didn't profit personally from it.
He didn't have criminal intent.
He didn't, right?
So... How... How could this... How could this happen?
Well, come on.
We all know how it happens.
Let me spin you a tale here.
It's not proof.
It's just my belief in how things work based upon Well, a lifetime of these sorts of things in some ways or another in the business world and other places.
But anyway, this is how it works.
So you get a new politician comes into power, a new party comes into power, and Justin Trudeau was kind of a new dude, right?
Now, then everyone's saying, well, what's this guy going to be like to work with?
Now, the first thing that pretty much comes out of his office is, go after these leaks, go and investigate these leaks, right?
So everyone's like, oh, okay, so that's who we're dealing with.
If there's a leak, they're going to call the cops and try and get people jailed.
So that's who we're dealing with, right?
And that sends a very, very clear signal.
Like if you've ever had a new boss, right?
You know what it's like.
You try and figure out how reasonable is the new boss.
Is he a bully?
Is he mean?
Is he vindictive?
Is he petty?
Is he vengeful?
Well, call the cops.
Someone might have leaked.
And so that's very, very clear.
So, oh, there wasn't any political interference.
Come on!
Come on!
And so just because there's nothing that says, well, you've got to call this guy, otherwise X, Y, and Z, bad things are going to happen.
When you have that much power, you just send out a sort of ripple signal out into the political world.
We are going to, like, the prime minister's office wants these leaks.
They might even want this guy.
And this is what they're willing to do.
Do you want to be the guy to say no?
Do you want to be the guy to say, are you crazy?
We can't find anything.
There's nothing here.
Leaks are common.
This guy just wanted his Navy.
We can't find any... Do you want to be the guy?
Knowing that these are the kinds of initiatives coming out of this office?
You don't want to be.
So there's just this kind of pressure.
That goes on.
It's what Wilson Raybaud was talking about with regards to the SNC-Lavalin affair.
I've got a whole presentation on that.
I'll link to it below.
You should check that out.
So, I don't know.
One of the things that the left is somewhat known for is projection, right?
Accuse other people of what you're actually doing, right?
So let's look at breach of trust with regards to pursuing a guy for two and a half years, denying him access to his, I believe, legitimate legal funds to cover this.
Pursuing this guy, withholding documents, harassing this guy, driving him into the ground, getting him laid off and bankrupting him virtually.
I mean the guy spent an ungodly amount on legal fees.
So let's look at that with regards to this, right?
Could you look at the people who initiated this and say, well, is it a mock departure to pursue people in this way for possible leaks?
Is it a mock departure?
Yeah, it seems to be.
Is it using public office for purposes other than the public good?
Yeah, I think so.
The public good was served by the Davey Shipbuilding Contract because they got their ship at the beginning of last year rather than years from now.
So yeah, it did serve the public good.
Is pursuing someone for this?
Is the intention to use The power of the Prime Ministership or the surrounding offices or anything like that?
Is there an intention to use that for a purpose other than the public good?
For a dishonest, partial, corrupt or oppressive purpose?
Well, that's an interesting question now, isn't it?
Almost like to ask it is to answer it.
So, here's something else.
And again, I know I'm skipping around in time.
I apologize for that.
I tried organizing this purely by timeline, but the story was too fragmented.
Okay, so Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, twice in April 2017 and February 2018, publicly stated that the case then evolving around Vice Admiral Mark Norman would find its way to a Canadian courtroom before he is actually charged.
Wow!
What a thing!
What a thing to say!
So, okay, what did he actually say?
2017, Trudeau's words were that the matter would, quote, likely end up before the courts.
In February 2018, the Prime Minister of Canada spoke with even greater conviction.
Norman's case would, and I quote, inevitably, end quote, lead to, quote, court processes.
So how on earth, see they say, well the RCMP acted, the prosecution, all completely independent of political direction or interference or anything like that.
So how on earth is the Prime Minister saying that this case is going to go to court for sure?
It's still being investigated.
Nobody's talked to the conservative people, nobody asked for documents from them, nobody's talked to Norman from the RCMP, so How would the Prime Minister know that he's going to be charged before he's charged?
Well, if someone is leaking information... I'm sorry, this is terrible.
If someone from the RCMP or the prosecution office or whatever, if somebody's leaking information to Justin Trudeau, that's called a leak.
So, pursuing someone with the full might and weight of the government's legal and prosecutorial power Pursuing someone.
If Justin Trudeau is getting information about where that's going to go, then he's getting a leak while the RCMP is pursuing someone criminally for a leak.
I don't even know what to say.
I have no idea what to say about that.
That's almost beyond comprehension, right?
If Justin Trudeau has inside information about this, then he must be, or someone around him, must be leaking information to him, right?
But you see, leaking is really bad.
That's why you've got to prosecute people for leaking, then why, right?
So if he has inside information about where this is going to go, it's a leak.
If he doesn't have inside information about where this case is going to go, then he's publicly calling for what he wants, or what he thinks should happen.
It's either a leak, or he's publicly calling for what he thinks should happen, or what he wants to happen.
So, again, if you are in charge of figuring out whether Norman gets charged, and the Prime Minister of Canada is saying, oh yeah, it's totally going to court.
Do you want to be the guy to say, hey, look, sorry, man, you're totally off base here.
You're totally wrong.
You're going to have to retract that and you're going to have to apologize for that, right?
Because, you know, Trudeau is very good at apologizing for what everyone else has done 100 years ago, but not so good for what he does himself, right?
So that's, again, astonishing stuff.
So March 9th, the RCMP charged Norman with one count of breach of trust.
Now, September the 4th, Norman's lawyer, Marie Hennen, reports that the government is withholding secret documents that she needs, quote, so that we can defend the case and so that we can see the full story, right?
So that's what you need to do, right?
So this is the whole subpoena in documents, it's discovery, right?
So the government says, we have enough for a case against you, then you of course have the right to see all of the documents that they used to build up the case against you.
All the facts, because you need to know what you're charged with, and when you know what you're charged with, why?
What's the material information that led to them deciding to charge you?
Right?
And you so you need to see well it was just me and here's how we know that he broached public trust for his own personal gain or in a corrupt or oppressive manner and blah blah he had criminal intent here's how we know all of you need to know all of this stuff so that you can defend against the charges.
Now the court ends up scheduling Norman's trial to start on August 19th 2019.
19th, 2019.
Just wanted to point out the wheels of justice are just ridiculously slow.
It is just crazy.
But anyway, now the trial is going to last seven to eight weeks, which overlaps with the federal election campaign.
So, uh, I'm, I'm guessing the liberals don't particularly want that because the liberals, okay.
So the, the, he was charged and then the government did not deliver the documents as far as I can see in a way that was reasonable and timely and unredacted and so on.
So I would assume that then they would have to have to, by this point, have produced these documents, which they didn't seem to want.
Now, in the court brief, the Crown, the prosecution, alleged that Norman, quote, knowingly and deliberately, end quote, leaked this information and breached cabinet secrecy on 12 separate occasions between October 3rd, 2014 and into November of 2015.
The Crown also alleged that Norman, quote, knew the use to which the leaked information would be put by Davey, Davey lobbyists and the media.
But again, he was authorized to speak to the Davy shipyards.
RCMP Corporal Matthew Boulanger wrote in the warrant used to ransack Norman's home, quote, I believe Norman did this to influence decision-makers within government to adopt his preferred outcome.
Again, if his preferred outcome is in the public good, it's really hard to see how this meets the standard of proof required by the statute, at least for me.
Again, not a lawyer.
So, this discovery process where you're supposed to turn over all of these documents, significant questions are being asked.
So, did the Trudeau government fail to provide Norman's prosecutors with relevant information?
Did it also keep said info from the defense?
Counsel, right?
So if there were exculpatory documents that the Trudeau government had that they did not provide to the prosecutors, then the prosecutors would be more liable to charge Norman, right?
Because they didn't get the evidence against him.
So if they're keeping them both from the prosecution and from the defense counsel, then the prosecution is going full tilt ahead without any countervailing documents to push back against the charges, and the defense can't defend because they can't get the information that they need.
Now, of course, as you know, and as I mentioned, the criminal charge against Norman has only been stayed, not dismissed.
Now, this technically keeps the charge alive for a year.
They can restart it and all that.
Now, this is very, very important.
Now, the obvious one is that, look, if the Liberals win,
in the fall in Canada then they can just resurrect this like running 50,000 volts through Frankenstein right so they can get this thing back up and running again so there's that sort of Damocles hanging over Norman's head but here's another important aspect of this which is because the charges have been stayed and not dismissed it means that politicians
who are questioned about this can say, well, I can't talk about it because the charges are technically not dismissed.
That's wild!
If the charges were dismissed, it's done and dusted, there's double jeopardy, can't be charged again, so you can say whatever you want, right?
But if the charges are stayed not dismissed, then reporters who start questioning liberal politicians, they can say, hey, I can't talk about it, it's still a semi-active case, right?
It provides plausible deniability for any politicians who want to dodge questions about the case.
Is that accidental?
Hmm.
Of course the biggest question, why was Norman charged with the crime in the first place?
Why?
I think the Liberal government and Prime Minister resented being held to an agreement on military procurement entered into under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper.
They got pressure from perhaps friends in the Irving shipyards and so on.
700 million dollars, a lot of money.
A lot of fruit to dangle over friendly corporations.
Now, Norman's defense team have alleged that the former Treasury Board Minister Scott Bryson had tried to squash the contract with Davey for the sake of its rival firm, Irving Shipbuilding Inc.
Bryson has denied this claim.
Norman's lawyers also alleged political interference, accusing the Privy Council Office of attempting to direct the prosecution.
Now, of course, the Privy Council says no, and Norman's lawyers have recently said that they do not believe that there was political interference, but I'm just sort of reporting it.
Norman's legal team, of course, subpoenaed emails, text messages, and meeting notes belonging to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as well as his senior advisers.
Federal prosecutors, of course, have insisted there was no political interference in the case, nor in the decision to stay the charge.
Attorney General and Justice Minister David Lamatti has also denied any political interference, right?
Now, this is, so again, then why did Trudeau assert that the case was going to court, in other words, that Norman was going to be charged before he was charged?
Right?
How did Trudeau know about that?
Because if Alico did Trudeau, was Trudeau directing it?
Who knows, right?
That seems kind of important.
Now, with regards to it being really, really hard to get these documents from the government, yeah, that's, to me, a little doubtful.
So you think of the amount of power that the government has to pursue an investigation, right?
They've got subpoenas.
They've got search warrants.
They can go question.
I mean, they've got a huge amount of power to go and pursue a particular case, particularly after, of course, charges have been laid.
Now, Marie Hennen and her team were able to interview conservatives and other people and get documents and then present those documents to the prosecution and the prosecution says, okay, well, we're going to stay the charges.
So that's kind of odd.
So if Marie Hennen can go and do this investigation but the prosecution can't, that's kind of weird.
The way I would analogize it is something like this.
Let's say your neighbor borrows your lawnmower and then A week or two later, you need to mow your lawn.
You go over to your neighbor and you say, hey man, can I get my lawnmower back?
And he's like, I can't find it.
It's the weirdest thing.
I simply cannot find it.
And you're like, well, that's weird.
I mean, it's an odd thing to steal, but hmm.
OK, you can't find it, right?
And then you think you hear a lawnmower, right?
And then you go over to your neighbor's house the next day.
He's like, are you sure you can't?
He's like, oh man, I've searched everywhere.
I cannot find this lawnmower.
And then his wife comes home and opens the garage door and there's your lawnmower sitting right there.
Sitting right there!
What's the guy... Oh!
I guess I didn't... I mean, come on.
The guy just wanted your lawnmower.
Let's be honest, right?
So, this is sarcastic columnist, well I don't know if he's sarcastic all the time, but this is sarcastic.
Mark Bonikowski said, quote, not that there was any political interference in Norman being charged with leaking cabinet secrets in the first place, of course, just as there was no political interference in denying his defense team the documents that were necessary for his defense, including a 60-page memo from the clerk of the Privy Council to the Prime Minister, and just as there was no political interference, as in the Privy Council coaching potential witnesses on how to testify, And what to say?
Yeah, that came up too, right?
Norman's lawyers have alleged that the PMO and PCO were telling witnesses what to say.
Now, I mean, if you have to testify, your lawyer can say, here's how you should answer, and so on, but they can't say, say this and don't say that, because you have to promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, under oath, and blah, blah, blah.
It's highly unethical for a lawyer to influence the testimony of witnesses.
It can be a crime for someone to coach a witness to testify one way or another, right?
So they can, a lawyer can help you to tell the truth in a way that's useful and helpful, but they can't tell you to say this, don't say that, because you're under oath, you've got to tell the truth, right?
Conrad Black The RCMP, the same Palooka force that brought us the ghastly fiasco of the trial and resounding acquittal of Senator Mike Duffy, alleged that Vice Admiral Norman was the source of press leaks and searched his house with a warrant in January 2017, a fact That was also mysteriously leaked to the press.
He was suspended with full pay and finally, March of 2018, he was charged with a criminal breach of trust.
The government barred him from the benefit of the loan of money for legal fees to accused government employees pending judgment, a capricious attempt to starve him into surrender.
Right, so if you're a government employee and you are accused, you can get a hold of loans for legal fees.
No, they wouldn't let him have it.
Colonel Black goes on to say, it appears to be clear that exculpatory evidence was withheld by the prosecution, deliberately or otherwise, outgoing Liberal MP and Parliamentary Secretary Lieutenant General retired Andrew Leslie, a grandson of two former defense ministers, General Andrew McNaughton and Brooke Claxton, had announced he would testify on behalf of Vice Admiral Norman.
The Prime Minister ducked out of question period for two days as this contemptible abuse of prosecution collapsed.
We'll get a little bit more into that.
But yeah, the case seemed to be dropped pretty quickly after subpoenas went out for Trudeau's notes and emails and other documents and also pretty quickly after this Liberal MP, Andrew Leslie, agreed to testify on behalf of Vice Admiral Norman.
I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
So here's another thing.
So when you, again, I'm no lawyer, this is my understanding of it, right?
I'm sorry to repeat myself, I just want to be clear.
So when you send out a request, like freedom of information, right?
You have the right to records that the government have that aren't protected, that are directly protected by secrecy laws and so on.
So what you do is you say, we want everything related to this guy, right?
And they're supposed to run a search and give you everything related to this guy, right?
So, December 17th, 2018, Crown prosecutors resist suggestion to political interference in Norman's case.
Well, on January 29th, 2019, the court hears about the internal code names used to identify Norman, including The Boss, MN3, C-34, and The Kraken.
First of all, I think it's a life fairly well lived if you end up with a nickname called The Kraken, but why is this?
It's to avoid capturing documents in searches under the Access to Information Law.
In December, a witness called by Norman's lawyers to testify reports that his superior officer, a Brigadier General, told him Norman's name was deliberately not used in internal Department of National Defense files.
This means that any search for records about Norman under the Access to Information Law would come up empty.
The witness, who was a military officer, reported to the court that he was processing an access to information request in 2017 that came back empty.
Now that's...
Kind of odd.
It's like, hey, we would like Apple emails about Tim Cook.
And Apple says, no, we don't have any emails about Tim.
No, Tim Cook is not referenced in any documents.
We're like, dude, he's the CEO.
So when the second in command of the Canadian military and the guy in charge of the actual Navy, when you ask for documents or emails or whatever related to the guy, and they say we don't have any, so That's weird, right?
That's kind of unusual.
So the witness went to seek clarification, right?
The guy who was running this search.
The witness testified that the general smiled and told him, and I quote, Don't worry, this isn't our first rodeo.
We made sure we never used his name.
Send back the nil.
Return.
Now, that's just strange.
Now, why wouldn't you refer to somebody by name?
Oh, it's a nickname.
It's like, well, you know, that's kind of odd, because everyone has to know the nickname.
They have to know exactly who you're referring to.
The eagle flies at dawn.
What does that mean?
I don't know.
Norman's getting on a plane to Afghanistan tomorrow.
You know, that sort of makes sense.
So, especially if you've got multiple nicknames.
The Boss, MN-3, C-34, The Kraken.
I mean, if you've got multiple nicknames, People are getting coming in and out all the time.
How is anyone supposed to know who you're talking about in a consistent way?
So that just seems hinky, I guess is the phrase.
According to CBC, for March 6, 2019, again, I'll put sources to this below, emails and text messages sent by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his senior staff members related to the criminal case against Vice Admiral Mark Norman were delivered to Ontario Superior Court on Wednesday.
At the same time, the lawyer for the former vice chief of the defense staff also threatened to ask the court to subpoena Trudeau's former principal secretary, Gerald Butz, and clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Wernick, to testify if they don't produce all documents relevant to the defense.
Hennen, this is, of course, Norman's lawyer, well, one of his lawyers, also noted that the Privy Council office's top lawyer responded to a request for his meeting notes by providing a copy of the Constitution, pieces of legislation, and the Access to Information Act manual.
Yeah, that's strange.
The whole point of subpoenaing these documents is you get stuff that's not already in the public domain.
Here's my website.
Come on.
I just want to repeat this, right?
Hennon also noted that the Privy Council Office's top lawyer responded to a request for his meeting notes by providing a copy of the Constitution, pieces of legislation, also in the public domain, of course, and the Access to Information Act manual.
Now, if that isn't what would be called a rather rude gesture towards you, I'm not sure what is.
We need all of your meeting notes.
You know, the ones that aren't already in the public domain.
Here's a copy of the Sears manual.
Oh, no Sears anymore.
Well, you get what I mean.
The lawyer, Marie Hennen, described that response as, quote, completely and utterly useless.
All of the material is publicly available, which prompted Judge Heather Perkins McVeigh to ask, how is that possibly responsive to the subpoena?
You gotta have a lot of power to do that kind of stuff.
So Norman's lawyers claimed at one point that the Privy Council's office, the department that supports the Prime Minister's office, was attempting to direct the prosecution.
This claim was, or would be, far more serious than Wilson-Raybould's claim that she felt pressured over the SNC-Lavalin matter.
Marie Hannan has subpoenaed all relevant emails, text messages and meeting notes from Slash to Trudeau and his senior advisors, including Wernick and Wilson-Raybould, in order to make that case.
Those documents started to arrive in the hands of Norman's defense, many in redacted form.
2019.
March 28th.
Marie Hennon reveals the existence of a 60-page memo about the Norman case sent by Wernick to Trudeau in October.
The following day, the Justice Department defends its refusal to disclose the contents of the memo, claiming that it is subject to solicitor-client privilege.
Hmm.
Interesting.
Now, of course, solicitor-client privilege is not a law of nature.
You can always choose to waive solicitor-client privilege.
It's happened many, many times.
So if this memo is innocuous, in order to minimize any suspicion that there could have been interference in this case from the PCO, the PMO, or whoever, you just say, oh no, I'm waiving solicitor-client privilege.
Go for it.
Right?
I mean, that's one way of approaching it, but they're not doing that.
Right?
May 3rd, CTV News reports Liberal MP Andrew Leslie has reported to the government that he will testify for Norman if he is called as a witness at trial.
Now, Leslie would not have, or does not have, specific knowledge about the allegations that gave rise to the charge against Vice Admiral Norman, but he would provide, under oath, insight into how the case was treated by the Liberal government during both the investigation and the pre-trial phase.
Under oath.
And, as a guy from a military family, the reputation of Vice Admiral Norman is stellar.
It appears spotless.
There's so many people who've said the idea that this guy would do something untoward or would break the law or would betray public trust or try and use his power as a public official in some malicious or oppressive manner is ridiculous.
I mean, this guy just wanted his ships because he's in charge of the Navy and he couldn't sail anywhere.
So he's under oath.
The documents are pouring in.
Some are redacted.
Marie Hennen has interviewed the people that the RCMP should have interviewed of course and has found information out about that.
The net is closing in.
The light is brightening up and people are going to see and this is starting now and then of course in August the trial would have begun and all of this stuff would have come tumbling out and Canadians and others are very interested in this and it is a very interesting situation.
The emails are pouring out.
They basically have a star witness, who's a liberal, who will talk about how everything happened with this case inside the liberal government.
Oh, we're staying the charges!
So, May 8th, of course, 2019, federal prosecutors stay the breach of trust charge, given new evidence from Norman's defense team.
So, prosecutors no longer believe that there is a reasonable prospect of conviction.
Now that is something you should figure out before you charge someone, before you raid his home, before you raid the home of a shipyard and lobbyist, before you put someone into, what did he raise, like $400,000 for his defense?
I can't imagine how much he spent.
Now, the government has now kindly offered to pay Norman's legal costs.
In other words, taxpayers are going to pay for it.
You're not supposed to charge someone without talking to the relevant parties and then slow walk a whole bunch of documents that I assume have something to do with being exculpatory because when the documents came over and when Marie Hennen produced what she had produced, they stayed the charges.
You're not supposed to charge someone.
It's like shoot first, ask questions later.
You're not supposed to charge someone and then 18 months, I don't know, whatever it is, he spent a year in limbo, they charged him, it was a year and a half ago, something like that.
You're not supposed to put a guy, destroy his reputation, kill his career, put him under a cloud, cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars for two and a half years and then say, oh yeah, no, we don't think there's any reasonable prospect of conviction in this case now.
The RCMP have said that they did a fine job of researching all of this.
We'll probably never know.
Conrad Black said, This appears to be a malicious and illegal prosecution of a blameless senior serving officer who fought his corner as a brave man must.
If that is what it is, heads should roll, not of scapegoats, token juniors or fall guys, but of those responsible for this outrage.
Now some have argued that the government docs that were withheld were the ones that helped exonerate this guy.
So if you're holding on to evidence that exonerate a guy and you refuse to hand it over, it's because you want to harass him, you want to harm him, you want to continue these charges, you want to bleed him dry financially, you want to punish him.
Crazy.
So, the Crown's case against Norman, of course, began to collapse in March 2019, largely due to this revelatory information from several former Conservative cabinet ministers and staffers.
The Crown reported that it believed there was no longer a reasonable chance of conviction after it received startling new information from Norman's defence team!
Norman's defence team.
Now, that may happen in a court of law, but the idea that it would happen because they got so frustrated waiting for documents, I assume, that they just went and did their own investigation, that's just astonishing, right?
Now, there was an additional complication, right?
So, some of this stuff is cabinet confidences, right?
So, any reasonable legal system has disclosure of evidence as a key thing, right?
And courts can normally compel you to release information that is relevant to the case at hand.
But the Canada Evidence Act lets the government refuse requests for cabinet confidences.
So documents marked as cabinet confidences are they held sort of closely guarded political secrets and they're prepared for ministers to help them make good decisions and so on and they're usually protected legally protected from unauthorized release.
So that's important.
That's kind of like a solicitor-client privilege but not the same.
So Former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper tweeted, tweeted, it's kind of public, he said, I have indicated no objection to the release of any document relevant to the Norman case.
Right, so remember that 60-page document sent to Trudeau, solicitor-kind privilege, you can't see it!
Whereas Harper said, yeah, you can look at anything you want, anything you want relevant, like anything.
Amazing.
Just to see, that's the difference.
So this new evidence gathered by Norman's lawyers and presented to the Crown, this was on March 28th, included some documents not uncovered during the investigation.
Norman's lead defense lawyer blames this fact on government obstruction.
In court, the Crown reported that this new information provided greater context about Norman's conduct and, quote, revealed a number of complexities, end quote, prosecutors hadn't previously known about.
They investigated this guy for what, like a year?
Raided and, I mean, good lord.
How could you not know about something that the defense can just get a hold of?
Remember, the defense doesn't have one-tenth of one percent of the powers that the government has in terms of pursuing this kind of information.
So, again, it's back to this, the guy says, I can't possibly find your lawnmower and his wife opens the garage door, there it is!
Terrible.
Lead prosecutor Barbara Mercier said nothing about the specifics of that new information.
Right?
No one's talking about it, but everyone's talking about how there was no political interference in this case.
Just wanted to be clear about that.
Whether you believe that or not is up to you.
So this lead prosecutor did say that the prosecution said Norman's actions were inappropriate and secretive, but that this did not mean a crime was committed.
She said, inappropriate does not mean criminal.
That is a face-saving gesture, I believe, at the expense, still, of Vice Admiral Norman's reputation.
Come on.
You can't just throw words like that around.
The whole point is to try and find out whether the guy was guilty or not.
You can't say, well, secretive, inappropriate.
I mean, you can't say that.
I don't think.
I mean, you can say it, of course.
Do whatever you want but it just doesn't seem right that if you have to withdraw a case because after two and a half years of investigation you didn't find something that the defense counsel found fairly easily I think that a sorry would be in order and I don't think that further saying that he was inappropriate and secretive is the way to handle it but perhaps that's just me.
So what is the Moral of the story.
Well, first of all, the fact that this guy's had his charges stayed is obviously, I think, a good thing and a reasonable thing.
And people say, oh, the system worked.
I don't know that you can say that the system worked that well when this guy was under a cloud for two and a half years.
His home was ransacked.
His stress levels were through the roof, I'm sure.
I don't know that you can really say that the system worked.
But I will say that if the purpose was to punish a leaker, well, that purpose has been achieved.
Because people can look at this guy and say, okay, well, do I want to leak?
Do I want... Now, again, leaks are bad.
I get all of that, right?
Leaks are bad, but we don't know if this guy leaked.
I don't think that he did.
I mean, the guy was given permission to talk to the shipyard, so... And this was a cabinet-approved activity, so...
So this is a warning shot, right?
It's a shot across the bow.
It's what Mao said, you know, punish one person, instruct a thousand.
So people are looking at this like it's an isolated thing, but this is going to affect an entire culture of, you know, the sometimes too cozy relationship between governments and the press.
But nonetheless, I think that has been achieved, whether we like it or not.
Now, with regards to this, look, The fact that there is some potential corruption here, just as there was or is in the SNC-Lavalin case, is not absolutely shocking.
You know, people tell you everything that you need to know very, very quickly when you meet them.
And we ignore that at our peril.
And people can say, well, there was no possibility of knowing that there could be problems down the road.
People say things right up front about what they mean.
So, I mean, I'll give you an example.
So there are, to me, disqualifying remarks.
In other words, things that you say that would mean that no sane voter would vote for you.
I mean, the two that come to mind with Trudeau is his praise for Castro.
Praise for Castro.
So this is what, I mean Castro like a mass murdering guy who was good friends with a child murderer named Che Guevara and so on.
So Trudeau said Fidel Castro was a larger-than-life leader who served his people for almost half a century.
He described Mr. Castro, I mean the guy was a communist dictator for almost half a century, as Cuba's longest-serving president.
I mean we wouldn't say that about the leader of North Korea would we?
He said, Trudeau said, while a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro's supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for El Comandante.
He added, Mr. Castro was, quote, a legendary revolutionary and orator whose death had brought him, quote, deep sorrow.
Trudeau said, I know my father was very proud to call him a friend, and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away.
I mean, he was a mass-murdering communist dictator.
I mean, Cubans had such affection for him that they risk shark-infested waters while clinging to Wilson-shaped volleyballs just to get off this open-air prison known as Cuba.
So to me, if you praise a totalitarian dictator who slaughtered countless people without trial, that to me is kind of a disqualifying statement.
Here's another one.
Justin Trudeau was asked which nation he admired most.
He responded, there's a level of admiration I actually have for China.
their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime.
Well, that to me would be a disqualifying statement.
So So that's admiration for two dictatorial systems while running for a supposedly free market democracy in the West.
Disqualifying statements.
But they're not.
You can say these things and still get elected.
I don't understand how.
I don't understand why.
I mean, people pounce on things that I've said over the course of 15 years, sometimes in the heat of passion.
I mean, good Lord, I mean, there's two things.
And this guy who's like, well, we've got to have a rule of law.
Well, I mean, he took a bit of a hammer blow to the rule of law regarding immigration when Justin Trudeau put out a sentimental tweet about welcoming the world with open arms.
We welcome you, blah, blah, blah.
No, no, that's not the way the law works.
The way the law works is if you claim to be A refugee, you have to stay in the first safe country you get to, which is not Canada for these people.
It's astonishing.
So, you know, if some of the accusations that have been flying around, probably we'll never know if they're true or not, but if they did turn out to be true, that there was withholding of exculpatory information, if this was a political vendetta, using the awesome power of the prosecutorial state to go after somebody who stood between liberals and the Bags of money they wanted to rain down on friendly corporations.
If that ever does turn out to be the case, how could anyone be desperately shocked?
People tell you exactly who they are.
He didn't hide it.
He didn't... There's no mystery here.
There's no mystery at all.
And I guess, I mean, countries make mistakes.
They are taken in by sentimentality.
They're taken in by nice haircuts.
I don't know.
But, yeah, to me, if you have anything positive to say about two murderous dictatorial systems, I don't know how you get elected.
I genuinely don't.
And I, of course, may not be the only person thinking that these days.
Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest Free Demain Show on Philosophy.
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