Juno News - True North Report： Trudeau on the wrong side of another prosecution

00:00:00.000 Good afternoon Canada. Welcome to another edition of the True North Report. My name

00:00:04.980 is Andrew Lawton with you for the next little while as we talk about how Justin

00:00:10.720 Trudeau's government has once again found itself in the midst of a public

00:00:15.680 prosecution of a very high-profile nature and once again Justin Trudeau's

00:00:20.460 government has put itself on the wrong side of said public prosecution. Although

00:00:26.960 a little bit different there are a lot of similarities between the case against

00:00:31.840 Vice Admiral Mark Norman and the case against SNC-Lavalin, the case that we've

00:00:37.460 been talking about now for some months. And I want to bring this up because we see

00:00:42.920 the complete and utter hypocrisy from the Justin Trudeau government on this file.

00:00:48.380 So we'll talk about all that as the stream goes on. If you're tuning in from

00:00:52.700 wherever in the world it is from which you are tuning, I think that's the proper

00:00:57.200 way, all of those preposition stuff, all that preposition stuff. Let me know in the

00:01:02.380 chat what's going on and where you're watching from and what it is you think

00:01:06.220 about this. Jean or Jean, I think it's Jean, I hope I'm correct, says good

00:01:12.020 afternoon. Well good afternoon Jean or Jean, Jean rather it's great to have you

00:01:15.560 tuned in here. And to everyone else thank you very much. You know I want to bring up

00:01:21.020 the parallel between SNC and Mark Norman because they show that the government is

00:01:28.080 not above putting itself into these things and doing so despite the

00:01:34.620 political consequences of it. So SNC, which is still going on, we know Justin

00:01:39.860 Trudeau tried to pressure the Attorney General at the time, Jody Wilson-Raybould,

00:01:44.000 to basically intervene in an ongoing prosecution with the purpose of

00:01:51.060 abandoning it, entering into some deferred prosecution agreement and letting it so

00:01:55.700 the company could basically get away with its, well get away with its bribing,

00:02:03.060 get away with its misconduct. That was what Trudeau was trying to get Jody Wilson-Raybould to do,

00:02:09.000 that was what Michael Wernick on Trudeau's urging was trying to get Jody Wilson-Raybould

00:02:14.060 to do. And the federal government, which has long-standing ties, the Liberal Party

00:02:18.540 specifically, long-standing ties to the SNC-Lavalin apparatus, was intervening to

00:02:27.060 protect this company. So then you go to the Mark Norman case and it's the opposite,

00:02:33.300 where this prosecution was ongoing up until a couple days ago, and we'll talk about what happened

00:02:38.580 there, and the government decided to push, I'd say push for it. The government was, it sounded like

00:02:50.520 politically intervening to drive the narrative that Mark Norman had in some way disgraced his country

00:02:58.200 and his uniform, which the more we learned, we learned could not be further from the truth.

00:03:04.820 And it's a complicated case, and a convoluted case, and one that goes back quite a while.

00:03:10.620 He was charged in March of 2018, so about a year and two months ago, and as of two days ago,

00:03:20.040 federal prosecutors are abandoning the breach of trust case. They're saying, nope,

00:03:24.380 they have not gone so far as to exonerate him, though, and I find this part interesting, but they

00:03:31.000 have said that they do not believe there is a reasonable prospect of conviction. And one question

00:03:39.080 that I think is incredibly valid here, apart from why drop the charges, is why were they brought against

00:03:45.840 him in the first place? And this question there's no real answer for that doesn't ultimately go back

00:03:52.320 to Justin Trudeau. You know, Christy Blatchford wrote in the National Post this blurb that I think

00:03:58.580 is relevant here. She writes, one of the prosecution's biggest hurdles was improving one of what are

00:04:07.460 called the essential elements of the offense of breach of trust, in particular that Norman had the

00:04:12.620 intent of using his office for a purpose other than the public good. That usually translates to having

00:04:18.620 had a corrupt or dishonest intention, and yet the government has never alleged that Norman personally

00:04:24.080 benefited in any way from his alleged leaking. The leaking, of course, allegation that he leaked

00:04:30.680 cabinet documents regarding a $700 million shipbuilding deal, and I think $700 billion is pretty much what

00:04:38.440 his legal bills are up to now. But there was never any instance of bribery that was alleged, there was

00:04:44.140 never anything untoward, he wasn't trading secrets, he was alleged to have leaked it, but there's no

00:04:51.800 evidence that he did so for a purpose other than the public good, if he did exactly what's being

00:04:57.000 described. And what's so dangerous here is that we have from Norman a long-standing relationship with

00:05:06.180 the previous conservative government and conservative cabinet, and then the prosecution comes under the

00:05:13.540 current liberal government. And that's not just, I mean, some cases that's just timing, I get that, but it's very

00:05:21.460 difficult to not draw a line between what Trudeau may have thought was an allegiance issue, despite the

00:05:29.620 fact that Mark Norman has never been anything other than a fair and honest and completely capable public

00:05:39.960 servant. He's exactly what you'd expect of a vice admirable admiral, an admirable admiral, if you will,

00:05:45.720 and he's exactly what you demand of it. So again, the point that I drive here is that Trudeau has found

00:05:53.000 himself on the wrong side of another public prosecution. In the case of SNC-Lavalin, he's trying to intervene to

00:05:59.700 get his buddies off, and in the case of Mark Norman, he's aggressively pushing to get his enemy

00:06:05.140 prosecuted, tried, and ultimately convicted. And I don't know where he was hoping it would go.

00:06:12.900 You know, I want to read a little bit about what led to him

00:06:16.320 getting the charge dropped in the first place. And this is a CBC headline published

00:06:22.680 on the evening of May 8th. So that's yesterday evening.

00:06:27.400 Information from former conservative cabinet ministers helped put an end to Norman case.

00:06:32.820 And the Crown, so the people that were tasked with prosecuting him, said this,

00:06:37.600 it's a complex legal charge. We didn't have the entire information.

00:06:45.420 Then why were you doing it in the first place? If you didn't have the entire information,

00:06:50.620 why were you driving this case initially? And here's what the CBC story reveals.

00:06:57.060 The Crown's case began to collapse in March, so two months ago, partly under the weight of

00:07:03.920 information from several former conservative cabinet ministers and staffers. They were key

00:07:08.920 players in the previous government's $668 million deal to have the Davies shipyard in Lévis, Quebec,

00:07:16.200 convert and lease a supply ship to the Navy, some of whom were interviewed by a lawyer representing the

00:07:22.660 former vice chief of the defense staff. So that's Norman's lawyer, Marie Hennon, or one of her colleagues.

00:07:27.940 But all of these key players that were involved in the case, I want to read a line about this.

00:07:33.660 These individuals were never questioned by the RCMP or the Crown in the run-up to a breach of trust

00:07:40.020 charge being laid against Norman a year ago.

00:07:42.800 So you have these key witnesses, none of whom were asked questions about the police agency responsible

00:07:52.020 for charging Norman, the Crown responsible for prosecuting that charge. And we're supposed to

00:07:57.780 believe that this was a charge that was decided on after reviewing all the evidence and determining

00:08:04.780 it was appropriate. No, it sounds like they steamrolled ahead in this and it took them 14 months.

00:08:10.240 14 months to be able to say, oh, you know, we didn't have all the information, let's walk this back.

00:08:17.580 They should have known this right away. They should have known this before charging him,

00:08:24.240 as a matter of fact. Libby writes, the government is paying his legal bills after having him charged.

00:08:29.060 Yes, this was something mentioned by Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan when the announcement was made

00:08:34.460 that the federal government preemptively offered this guy his legal bills. And I want to

00:08:40.040 explain for a moment why that is more cynical than benevolent. And first off, Norman didn't even

00:08:46.040 ask yet. He probably would have asked, but he didn't even ask. He actually learned about it

00:08:50.120 from a reporter. Someone was saying, I heard this on the radio. I haven't heard the clip yet.

00:08:55.900 But he was basically being asked a question. He was speaking and someone said, you know,

00:08:59.980 the government's doing this. Oh, really? What? What? Like he had no idea. So he didn't even ask for this

00:09:04.840 or push for it yet. And the federal government saying, okay, we'll give you these, these legal

00:09:09.660 bills. And a statement that came from the chief of defense staff suggests that they are trying to

00:09:14.800 find a way to get Vice Admiral Norman returning to his post, which it's really upsetting. This is a guy

00:09:25.460 who had had his life destroyed, his life's work put in the, basically down the barrel of a gun.

00:09:33.380 And thankfully, people that knew him, and had worked with him in the past, were very much able

00:09:40.400 to attest to his character. And I do genuinely think that helped him. I mean, Andrew Leslie, the

00:09:46.540 liberal MP, is going to or was going to be testifying on Norman's behalf. And this is the former

00:09:54.280 Lieutenant General, if memory serves, I might have the rank wrong, I think it's Lieutenant General,

00:09:58.900 that was going to say, oh, look, I mean, the liberals are against this guy, I'm for him.

00:10:03.240 Jason Kenney was going to stand up for him as well. This is a guy who had bipartisan support,

00:10:08.720 a lot of respect across the aisle. And he was basically completely screwed. So there was a GoFundMe 0.99

00:10:16.980 page for him that raised about $400,000. And now the government's paying for his legal bills,

00:10:22.620 as Libby points out. But the reason I think the government is doing that is because the government

00:10:29.280 knows that if it does not preemptively try to make this go away, what's going to happen is he's going

00:10:35.060 to sue for malicious prosecution, for legal bills, for reputational damages, I mean, there are any number

00:10:43.340 of things. And I don't think the federal government wants to open that can of worms, knowing that

00:10:48.820 there's probably evidence of malicious prosecution, there's probably evidence of the federal government

00:10:55.080 trying to conspire against him, or at the very least, of trying to make an example of him. And I

00:11:01.080 think that the defense minister is trying to preempt that as much as possible by saying, all right,

00:11:07.300 just take the lawyer fees. But I truly hope that he continues to fight. I mean, as a taxpayer,

00:11:12.660 I don't like the idea of the federal government having to shell out money. But in terms of standing

00:11:19.000 up for what's right, and standing up on principle, I honestly think that this is where the case has to

00:11:24.880 go. I mean, look, Omar Cotter, for crying out loud, got $10.5 million from the federal government,

00:11:29.360 and he killed a soldier. Mark Norman is a soldier, and remains a soldier. And I'm not saying he's

00:11:34.900 deserving of $10 million, but he's deserving of something. And what's so baffling about this case,

00:11:40.600 and what I find so frustrating about it is that the rationale that the Trudeau government used

00:11:46.760 when it gave Omar Cotter the $10.5 million was, oh, well, you know, if he was suing us, and we were

00:11:53.240 defending, and well, if we had kept on defending, then it would have cost more, and we might not have

00:11:59.700 won anyway. So by their rationale, there's no point in fighting anything, you just have to pay him to go

00:12:04.100 away. Well, here's one case where I think someone is probably deserving of that happening. And that's the

00:12:09.880 case of Admiral Norman. Corey writes here, Jason Kenney knows the deal. Yeah, Jason Kenney was in the

00:12:17.800 government when this was all happening. Dave writes, most people don't realize the dangers of

00:12:23.980 government deciding who gets prosecuted or not. Dictatorships do that. Yeah, the fact is politicians

00:12:30.280 should not be in the midst of any of these cases and any of these public prosecutions. But now you can't

00:12:37.000 have a public prosecution in Canada that doesn't have some level of political oversight. And I want

00:12:42.160 to read a line from Trudeau here, that I don't think you'll be able to get through without laughing.

00:12:49.480 He was asked in a scrum at Parliament Hall, about whether the Prime Minister's office was involved.

00:12:56.920 And he said that the prosecution of the Norman case was, quote, entirely independent of his office,

00:13:04.420 and that he has, quote, confidence that the work being done by the director of public prosecution is

00:13:11.540 good. So Justin Trudeau, who tried to get Jody Wilson-Raybould to interfere in the director of

00:13:17.720 public prosecution's work, is now saying that the PMO is entirely independent of the public prosecutor's

00:13:25.000 office, and he is complete confident in her ability to make the right decisions. And he expects Canadians 0.99

00:13:31.080 to buy this. He expects Canadians to believe this, that, you know, the PMO, which just three months ago

00:13:37.460 was trying to interfere in a public prosecution, has now decided to let these things be completely

00:13:42.800 independent. So I find that bizarre. And you can't deny the parallels that exist between the SNC-Lavalin

00:13:49.580 case, and this case with Mark Norman. And no one gets that more than Marie Hennon does, who was

00:13:58.160 Norman's lawyer, is Norman's lawyer, perhaps. And when she did that press conference, sitting beside

00:14:04.680 Vice Admiral Norman, she was able to throw, as the kids say these days, so much shade at Justin Trudeau,

00:14:13.240 it's not even funny. And you should actually watch the 30 minutes of this, because I wanted to watch 30

00:14:18.560 seconds of it. And then I ended up watching the whole thing here. And what happens is Marie Hennon sits 0.72

00:14:25.300 down, and I'm going to read the exact quote. Again, you have to watch this. I can't play clips easily,

00:14:31.460 so I'll just read it. You should see it. But she was talking about the Norman case. But before so, she said,

00:14:40.140 before we get started, I'd just like to introduce the all-female team that represented Vice Admiral Norman.

00:14:48.560 And then she said, fortunately, Vice Admiral Norman didn't fire the females he hired.

00:14:55.100 And she didn't mention Justin Trudeau. She didn't mention SNC-Lavalin. But the prevailing sense is that

00:15:00.660 she was very much invoking Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, and their terminations by Justin

00:15:07.140 Trudeau, in taking aim at Trudeau. Because for Norman, this is entirely personal. Trudeau had, for whatever

00:15:13.840 reason, a vendetta against Norman. Maybe he just doesn't like the military, as Stephen Harper charged

00:15:18.520 in the past. Maybe he thinks Norman was too cozy with the conservatives. Maybe he just doesn't like

00:15:23.860 the cut of his jib, or whatever. Maybe he doesn't like the Navy. Maybe the YMCA, you know, traumatized

00:15:28.820 him or something as a child. But whatever the reason, Trudeau did not want Norman. And this whole

00:15:36.660 prosecution seems to be a shambolic attempt to force him out of a job for nothing other than petty

00:15:44.280 political grievances. Carly writes, this is another example of Trudeau having to get his way all the

00:15:50.120 time. Yeah, but it's one thing to be a petulant child and want to get your way all the time. It's

00:15:55.400 quite another to treat institutions that are supposed to be independent, like they are your own

00:16:02.100 personal servants, which is how Trudeau seems to be treating the judiciary, including the supposedly

00:16:09.360 independent attorney general and director of public prosecutions. You know, when Hennon continued along

00:16:17.180 this, she said, the decision to stay this prosecution was discretion exercised by prosecutors

00:16:25.160 and the director of public prosecutions unimpacted by any political considerations, as it should be.

00:16:33.520 So again, she takes aim at Trudeau's record as someone who has demonstrably manipulated or tried

00:16:42.400 to manipulate public prosecutions in the past, and says, this is how things are supposed to work.

00:16:49.120 Politics are supposed to stay out of the prosecutorial process. So Marie Hennon 1.00

00:16:54.940 gets it. Marie Hennon gets it. Mark Norman gets it. And this is one of these cases where it seems

00:17:00.640 almost everyone but Justin Trudeau gets it. And that a guy like Mark Norman has such bipartisan

00:17:07.540 support, from Andrew Leslie to Jason Kenney to Lisa McLeod, a guy who's tremendously well-liked

00:17:13.100 left and right, but finds himself shouldering the liberal government's very poor approach to military

00:17:21.880 issues. And, you know, I don't know if the Crown in this case is just utterly incompetent, or genuinely

00:17:31.000 was operating with political considerations front and center. It sounds like a little bit of both,

00:17:37.300 quite frankly, when they were able to somehow have a charge leveled by RCMP without any oversight as to

00:17:45.860 the scope of evidence, without interviewing key witnesses, people that over a year ago would have

00:17:51.580 been able to say, well, hang on a minute, you've got to pay attention to this. And I don't yet know

00:17:56.000 what the information is. I don't know if Canadians will ever find out what this exculpatory information

00:18:00.900 was that was put in front of the Crown. But suffice it to say, whatever it was, would have been available

00:18:07.980 a year ago. It would have been available a year ago. Remember, he was charged in March, the investigation

00:18:14.100 started before then. So it's not even just a year and two months, it's a year and three, four months,

00:18:19.540 perhaps, that this should have been brought up by the people tasked with charging this man. But instead,

00:18:25.820 it was charged now and figure it all out later. And I'm glad that in this case, Trudeau has lost.

00:18:32.380 But for the sake of Vice Admiral Norman, I'm glad that he's been vindicated. Remember,

00:18:36.980 the prosecution tried to be a little bit iffy about this and say, oh, well, you know, we're not

00:18:41.920 saying what you did was right, but we're saying we can't prosecute you. Whereas the judge was very

00:18:48.720 much forceful in saying, look, you had a plea of not guilty. In the eyes of this court, you are innocent

00:18:55.860 and walk away as such. And I think on that, Norman has been vindicated. And you know what, it's a good

00:19:01.560 thing that his reputation was held in such high esteem and Trudeau's in such a considerably lower

00:19:08.280 level of esteem. We've got to wrap up. But a big thank you to all who tuned in here. We will have

00:19:13.680 more to talk about next week. But on a bit of a programming note, I am on Thursday headed to the

00:19:19.160 United Kingdom for the Tommy Robinson contempt of court hearing. Again, when you talk about abuse of

00:19:25.240 process and malicious prosecution, some parallels in that case as well. But we're also going to be

00:19:31.480 at True North trying to cover a press freedom summit that's being held in the UK by Canada

00:19:38.200 and the UK in July. And I wrote about this and did a video about it last week. It's going to be an

00:19:43.240 important case. We're crowdfunding our way there because we don't have that CBC $1.3 billion subsidy

00:19:50.200 or the $600 million media slush fund. So if you care about media freedom, and if you care about the

00:19:55.960 government not being able to just cast everything it doesn't like aside as fake news, and you can

00:20:01.320 contribute a few bucks to that, please do. You can find the information at tnc.news or shoot me an

00:20:08.040 email andrew at andrewlotton.ca and I can get you hooked up with all the right information there.

00:20:12.600 But in the meantime, have a great weekend, Canada. Thank you. God bless and good day.

00:20:18.440 you

Juno News - May 10, 2019

True North Report： Trudeau on the wrong side of another prosecution

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