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Well, isn’t that nice? The Crown has stayed the charge of breach trust against Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, on the grounds that there was no reasonable chance of conviction.

The prosecutor, Barbara Mercier, says there was never any political interference in the case, either in the decision to bring the charge to trial or in the decision to drop it. Norman’s lawyer, Marie Henein, lauds the latter decision as having been taken entirely independently, “in the highest traditions of the bar.”

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As for Norman, he is not only a free man, but his legal fees will now be paid for by the Defence Department; unusually, it had until now refused. And the Liberal government will be spared a trial that was promising to be acutely embarrassing for it, with former ministers and other high-ranking officials expected to testify for both the Crown and the defendant. How very tidy.

Except … that doesn’t really answer all of the questions raised by this affair. In fact, it doesn’t really answer any of them. Norman was entitled to every bit as much of the presumption of innocence he now enjoys on the day, in January 2017, when he was peremptorily suspended from his post as the second-highest ranking member of the military, without so much as a hearing; as he was a year later, when he was charged with leaking confidential Cabinet discussions related to a navy shipbuilding contract — leaks that had also proved embarrassing to the government — though not before the prime minister had publicly mused that the matter would “likely end up before the courts.”