QUESTION PERIOD — Justice
Vice-Admiral Mark Norman
May 13, 2019
My question is for the Leader of the Government in the Senate and is a follow-up to the one put forward by the Leader of the Official Opposition in the Senate in regard to Vice-Admiral Norman.
In your response to the question by Senator Smith, you stated, as you’ve done so many times in this chamber, that our national police force and the criminal prosecutor’s office in this country are arm’s length from the government. Yet, it doesn’t take away from the fact that the Prime Minister of Canada a number of weeks and months prior to the charges being laid forecasted that those charges would be laid.
So, government leader, unless the Prime Minister of Canada has developed a Nostradamus-type capacity to predict the future or if that’s not the case and he hasn’t developed those skills, is it a possibility that we have to worry about the integrity of our national police force and the criminal prosecutor’s office? How can you explain to this chamber that the Prime Minister of Canada had the capacity to forecast and predict weeks and months in advance that charges would be coming forward against Vice-Admiral Norman?
I can confirm that the capacity of Nostradamus is not available to the Prime Minister, that the Prime Minister respects the independence of the prosecution service, always has, and certainly continues to respect that independence, and that independence is exactly what was at play in the decisions around both the charging of and the staying of charges against Vice-Admiral Norman.
Government leader, with all due respect, the government keeps claiming to respect the arm’s-length process of the criminal prosecutor’s office and our police force, yet we’ve seen over the last few months testimony of senior government officials, including the Clerk of the Privy Council, the former Principal Secretary of the Prime Minister and the former Minister of Justice, that in a DPA request on the part of SNC-Lavalin there was an attempt to interfere. Now we have another case, a serious case, a sad case as far as Canadians are concerned, of a vice-admiral who the Prime Minister predicted months in advance that our police force in this country and our criminal prosecutor’s office would be coming forward with charges. That is unheard of and unprecedented. I don’t think ever in my time in Parliament have I seen a member of the cabinet or the Prime Minister be able to predict charges coming forward against a citizen of this country. You refuse to answer this question, as has the government: How could he possibly have known?
If there is a question there, let me simply say that in the case of the former Minister of Justice in the allusion to the discussions that were obviously and admittedly held with the former Minister of Justice, that officials —
How did he know, government leader? How did the Prime Minister know?
That officials clearly engaged with the Minister of Justice by her own admission. Certainly by the testimony of the national prosecution service, there was no attempt to influence her and otherwise interfere with the course of the independence of the prosecution service.
It’s completely inappropriate to extrapolate from conversations with the former Minister of Justice in one case and inappropriate interference with the prosecution service in another case where the prosecution service itself has recognized that it was their decision, independently taken, without any reference to any political personality to both engage in the prosecution and ultimately decide to stay the prosecution. I think we should all, as Canadians, take heart that our independent prosecution service is alive and well.
