The whole case should never have gone to an actual trial. I always thought so, and frankly even if V-A Norman did do something wrong (which I doubt), there are a lot of better ways they could have played this. Instead, they chose the worst possible move.
You could see they wanted to punish Norman for (allegedly) leaking info to Davie shipyards and the media, and if he actually broke some sort of internal secrecy code, that's legit. But really, it always seemed like the offense, in the Liberals' mind, was not leaking sensitive information itself, but rather exposing how Scott Brison was acting as Irving shipyards' agent on this issue.
One interpretation (theirs) was that Norman was close to an exec at Davie, but Brison was closer to Irving, and frankly in the military procurement circles, everyone knows everyone. A lot of the brass still in uniform have jobs lined up with big contractors or as consultants or whatever, for their pos-military careers. Some others, like Sajjan or Andrew Leslie, go into politics (there are ex-military Liberal, Conservative, and even NDP MP's right now). So anyone who says that military and political and business interests should each keep to themselves will be disappointed in the incestuous reality in Ottawa. The "development hell" that most procurement projects go through is infamous.
The supply ship replacement project is one of the most infamous in the whole Canadian military - a project whose planning went back to the early Chretien era, that underwent so many conceptual changes it looked like a decision would never be made. Martin and then Harper took over and still the project went on and on. Finally a
decision was made, awarding the contract to Seaspan in North Van. Irving got the largest shipbuilding contract, for the major warships, and Davie got nothing. But due to the volume of work going to Irving and Seaspan, it was understood at the time of announcement that Davie was unofficially promised to get the next Navy or Coast Guard project that took place.
Meanwhile the two existing Navy supply ships were getting too old to go on, and after a fire hit one and a collision damaged another, the Navy was suddenly left with zero supply ships to support their operations. They had to scramble to create new interim supply ships, because the fully militarized ones were still many years away from being completed. (Seriously, even as zero actual progress was happening, the local Conservative MP re-announced it at Seaspan, with a photo op, like 5 times). That's why Davie got the contract: it was an emergency, they needed supply ships ASAP, and they didn't want Irving or Seaspan to takes their focus off the projects they were already working on (and cause even more delays with those).
Makes sense, right? Everyone was cool with that idea, right? WRONG.
Irving immediately set about trying to undermine the Davie contract, calling press conferences and threatening lawsuits and whatnot, because the Davie contract was sole-sourced never considered any other bidders. (Not that Irving wasn't also way behind schedule on the patrol ships and frigate contract it already had.) As the Harper government was going down in flames (thank fuck for that) and the Trudeau government is newly sworn in, Irving thought it was a great time to pressure the new government to reverse the Davie decision, hoping for a 180 degree turn like with the F-35. Except that project was already mired in self-inflicted trouble; this one was expedited on a "the Navy needs a ship like RIGHT FUCKING NOW" basis. Irving - likely fronted by Scott Brison - sent out a sneaky letter to every new cabinet minister, with the idea that the Davie supply ship project should be paused for review (which would hopefully result in Irving being a new bidder, or kill the project entirely, which might kill of Davie shipbuilding as a company).
V-A Mark Norman - head of the Canadian navy, of course found out about this backroom attempt to snuff out the Davie project, and if the case against him is to be believed, leaked the cabinet-level letter both to Davie and the media. Anyone who's anyone could of course see Irving shipbuilding's fingerprints all over it. The issue blew up, and the Trudeau government had to back down. Irving was thwarted, and Scott Brison was shamed. The interim ships built by Davie went ahead, and got built on budget and on schedule; one of them, the Asterix, is already in service today. Yay, Mark Norman, saving the navy from political interference that would have crippled them for years, right?
FUCK NO. The Libs (well at least some of them) were butthurt about how Norman had interfered with the interference. So in came the cops and prosecutors, and eventually they charged Norman. The case was as clear as bilge water. Norman goes to court, and the government side basically withholds any and all documents that might have shown the entire picture of what was really going on - not just Trudeau-era stuff, but Harper era information too. On that alone, the case might have been tossed out by the judge, for preventing the defendant from mounting any sort of defense.
However, it seems the case rapidly began to crumble when Scott Brison suddenly buggered off back home (to avoid having to be questioned on his conduct ?), then Jody Wilson Raybould got demoted then ousted by the Trudeau government over SNC-Lavalin ; and finally Andrew Leslie (once in charge of the army) decided to not run for MP again and was going to testify on V-A Norman's side. Suddenly the case became unwinnable to the prosecutors dropped it? It was never going to work anyway, and the Trudeau government would have likely lost the case outright, becoming even more humiliated right before the election campaign.
Take note folks of what Norman's lawyer said in her statements today: the people that defense lawyer Henein blamed for the decision to make Norman the patsy in all this were Gerald Butts and Michael Wernick - the same pair of unelected insiders who pressured Raybould over the SNC-Lavalin case. The third part of the political pressure triangle in that case was the Treasury Board, which was led until recently by MP Scott Brison.
So what we have is the same few guys - all of whom were plugged more heavily into the PMO than most cabinet ministers and all backbench MPs, who just didn't respect the political / prosecutorial boundary, and I'll bet guided the PM towards some very bad judgments on issues, particularly when it comes to punishing people who stand in the way of backroom lobbying efforts.
They're all gone now - but the damage is done. The problem for the Liberals is that they burned a lot of bridges with their own caucus members, to say nothing of the public.
I don't want that Harperite goofball Andrew Scheer winning the next election, because frankly, the Conservatives have shown no sign of learning anything from when they lost power. If anything, they have since doubled down on all the worst shit that Harper did.
But despite all that, the Cons are laughing while the Libs self-destructing. If the Liberals keep fucking up, bleeding out from self-inflicted wounds, they can soon blame the bad judgement of the PMO for being the reason their own support collapsed and led this country back into tyranny and disaster.
If this was the UK or Australia, I think Trudeau would have been dumped in a caucus revolt, and they would fight the next election with someone else in the cabinet who has a totally different style, like Ralph Goodale. But many commentators have noted that such revolts are nearly unheard of in Canada, where the party leaders have a veto on nominations that can kill any MP or candidate's career.
TL;DR: I'm glad for this result; the case against Norman was beyond weak and he was basically being prosecuted for stopping a scheme which would have screwed the Navy for years.
