Vincent J. Curtis
4 Feb 21
Mark Norman, Julie Payette, Jonathan Vance - three people with things in common. One commonality is their spectacular falls from grace.
Vice Admiral Mark Norman was loyal to his service and to the orders he received from the outgoing Harper government. The Conservatives had negotiated an agreement to acquire a new and desperately needed replenishment ship for naval operations on the high seas.
A $668 million contract was let to Davie shipyard of Levis, QC, but incoming Liberal Treasury Board President Scott Brison allegedly wanted that contract for Irving Shipbuilding of his province of Nova Scotia. Cancelling the Davie contract meant setting back the delivery date for the new vessel, and possibly not getting one at all. Word of Brison’s alleged machinations leaked, the government was embarrassed, and Davie fulfilled its contract.
Norman was suspected of leaking, and a high profile criminal investigation took place in which it was hinted that Norman was just his side of a Russian spy. Dirty tricks were employed by the government to defeat Norman’s legal defense. Ultimately, the scale of the deceit and dirty tricks combined with the details of the case coming out caused the government to withdraw all charges, and Norman was allowed to honourably retire. Brison also retired.
Norman’s actual crime? Who knows? We still don’t know who leaked, and whether the leak amounted to a crime. Norman was a fall guy to bungled patronage machinations.
Julie Payette was Justin Trudeau’s pick to become Governor General and C-in-C CAF. There was no vetting. Likewise, there was no reason for Payette to be forced into resigning. Trudeau could simply have refused to permit an investigation. He could have told the CBC to stifle the stories, which Conrad Black characterized as coming from disgruntled stenographers. Payette had eighteen months to go, and for $338k in legal costs, the staff at Rideau Hall should just learn to suck it up.
But he didn’t. It raises the question, why? Did Payette take her constitutional powers too seriously? Did she balk when Trudeau asked to prorogue parliament? Did she caution Trudeau when, in the early days of the pandemic, he wanted parliament suspended for a whole year and his minority government granted unlimited spending power? Did she threaten to invite the Conservatives to form a government if he asked her to dissolve the House and call an election? We’ll likely never know – Payette is trying to hold onto her perks, and the drama teacher knows how to stick to the script.
Then there’s General Jonathan Vance, retired Chief of Defense Staff. It seems like the chicks have come home to roost. Scandalous chirpings reached the MND about Vance’s alleged decades’ long history of military conquests. Nothing was done, nothing came of it, and Vance retired after five years of exceptionally loyal service as CDS. Now, the chirps are public. But why? Vance is spent. Is schadenfreude the principle vindicated by humiliating him, demoting him to a three star, and then retire him on a reduced pension?
Meanwhile, two jolly tars with, er, hearts of oak, Admirals Don and Juan, have been beached after tales of burying treasure emerged, leaving the CAF like the bridge of the Bismarck after a salvo from Rodney. Trudeau’s Defense Minister, Sergeant Shultz, is taking shellfire.
After the kidnapping of the two Michaels, Vance cancelled several training programs that had been scheduled with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (!) In particular, Cold Weather Indoc, that would give the PLA skills for their confrontation with the Indian Army in the Himalayas. Vance did this without asking permission, and these actions annoyed Foreign Affairs.
Vance also put his foot down when he learned in April, 2020, that some genius was arranging for the CAF to conduct info ops against the Canadian public to support Trudeau’s pandemic lockdown measures.
Trudeau let Vance twist in the wind until
the probing got too close to himself, then he had it shut down.
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