Liberal Spitefulness Slammed

Tough as a spike, sharper than any damn tack, Marie Henein, the Indomitable, may have done — without the slightest intent of providing the benefit — the sprawling, directionless Trudeau government a great service. Being assiduous as she is astute, she provided the prosecution directorate the fruits of her investigations into the charges against the government-beleaguered Vice-Admiral Mark Norman — including interviews with principals in the affair not done by the RCMP — that were sufficiently probative of Norman’s innocence, that the prosecution, as all now know, was stayed. A lively brain is a fine thing in itself, but it is wondrous when backed up by diligent industry.

For the fullest explication of how the Henein team outworked the government lawyers in this case, Christie Blatchford (mincing no words as usual) sums it up best in her latest column, to wit: “The private bar will almost inevitably kick the living hell out of (government) prosecutors.”

Now staying the prosecution may not have been first on the wishes of the current administration, since it appears to have been singularly interested in giving Norman a good working-over. And indeed, considering the personal and career burdens heaped on him, during the near two years of clamour, investigation, suspension and financial strain, they did manage to provide him with a fairly good smack up as it was. But on the big question, the one that counts, all is clear. They lost; he won. And most who attended the affair will have no reservations in echoing the wonderful plaudits he extended to his lawyers on the victory.

Despite all he has been through he must still be very pleased.

Next in line with feelings of relief will be the administration in Ottawa. Emotionally I expect they’re ticked, but politically they have to be exhaling huge clouds of CO2 (technically, this is known as sighing) in relief at being spared a trial in August. What an Advent for an election that would have been: the exhibition of documents they ferociously fought to keep secret from the defence, a return to public view of the Trudeau government’s abrasive and conveniently abbreviated understanding of the rule of law, its selective and self-interested pursuit of criminal sanctions for government leaks.

Henein’s firm, doing the work competent investigators should have done, abrupted that trial, and thereby spared the Liberals enduring the worst possible prologue to an election that could be imagined.

Worse still, the trial conceivably could be running as counterpoint during the election, sparing the Tories and the NDP the cost and labour of producing their own election ads. Clips from the trial and the headlines of every day would have done that work for them.

There will be no roses (once a totem flower in Liberal lapels) sent to Marie Henein, but there should be. She has, in at least a limited sense, saved them from themselves. And saving them from themselves, though not to be advocated as a permanent strategy, appears to be the operating principle at Liberal HQ for the last few months. Or if a nautical reference is needed it’s been all battleships in the bathtub on the communications front.

Incidentally, isn’t it mingy that now, now, they’re going to pay Vice-Admiral Norman’s legal bills. They instigated the hell he’s endured for two years, denied a three-and-a-half-decade career officer financial support while facing a battery of publicly funded government lawyers, and then and only when the case against him falls apart — then, they offer to pay his legal bills.

The best time to help a drowning man is while he’s still in the water, or as it was put by the great Dr. Johnson on the subject of patrons and writers: “Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?” The government is very much a “patron” in this tale, Norman is ashore now, and they are “encumbering” with late help. The real help came from friends and fellow military who stood by him when it counted, most exceptionally former army commander Andrew Leslie, who being a Liberal MP made a choice between caucus solidarity and loyalty to a comrade. Lt. Gen. (Rt.) Leslie landed very firmly on the right side of that potential dilemma. Also it is a testament to some Canadians’ sense of fair play that witnessing the imbalance of forces between the government and “private citizen” Norman, gave so obligingly to his GoFundMe account.

The Liberals, by avoiding through no fault of their own a trial in August, have been spared the big shelling in this story. But not all. The plight of Vice-Admiral Norman offers a painful political symmetry with the SNC-Lavalin debacle, and carries more than a trace of the arrogance, fear of transparency, and fits of ruthlessness which is so vigorously at odds with a government that once coded itself with singular irony “sunny days.”

See Also:

(1) On Mark Norman case, heads should roll … and not the junior ones

(2) Ex-Tory MP Del Mastro accuses Elections Canada of a ‘personal vendetta’

(3) Extradition proceedings delayed for Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou

(4) Money laundering in B.C.’s real estate market inflated home prices, government reports say

(5) RCMP defends ‘thorough, independent’ investigation into Vice-Admiral Mark Norman