Trailer For The Next Upcoming Trudeau Soap

Mark Norman’s lawyer accuses Trudeau government of interfering in case

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Mark Norman's defense team focuses documents subpoena hunt on Trudeau and Butts

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Scott Brison exits politics, but Mark Norman trial sure to keep him in the spotlight

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Gerald Butts still denies responsibility for a bigger scandal: Ontario’s 'green energy' catastrophe


Years before becoming the prime minister’s key strategist, Butts held a similar position in the office of former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty. In this role, he launched the province on course for a vast suite of controversial environmental policies, culminating in the notorious Green Energy Act.

These initiatives were indeed significant. The McGuinty government’s obsession with phasing out coal and promoting renewable energy via outrageous subsidies and government diktat was a provably ruinous policy. Between 2008 and 2016, residential electricity costs in Ontario grew by more than 70 per cent — double the average for the rest of the country. In some cities, large industrial users saw prices spike by 50 per cent or more. According to Ontario’s current provincial Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk, Ontario taxpayers paid $37 billion over market rates for electricity during those eight years.

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On Friday, Norman’s lawyer read out a list of priority people whose records need to be produced ahead of the abuse-of-process motion, scheduled to be heard starting March 25.


Those five people are Trudeau himself; Butts, who was Trudeau’s principal secretary until resigning earlier this week; Katie Telford, Trudeau’s chief of staff; Michael Wernick, the clerk of the privy council; and Zita Astravas, the former issues manager in the Prime Minister’s Office, and now chief of staff to Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan.

“Those are high priority, in my respectful submission, and should be relatively easy to get through if (the Department of Justice) would provide it to the court to review,” Henein said.

“These requests have been outstanding for some time. I just want to make sure that we’re moving to the top of the list now the material that may be potentially relevant to the abuse.”

The case is scheduled to return to court March 6 for an update. The trial is not scheduled to start until August.

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Suspended as the military’s second-in-command in January 2017, Norman was charged last March with one count of breach of trust for allegedly leaking government secrets to undermine cabinet’s decision-making process on a major shipbuilding deal.

Norman has denied any wrongdoing. His legal team has alleged that he is the victim of political games on the part of the Liberals and that the government has interfered in the case.

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