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So Norman’s defence team set out to conduct that investigation on their own, interviewing key figures from the last year of Harper’s government. In late March, the defence presented a thick stack of documents to the Crown outlining their findings. The Crown followed up on that material in the weeks afterward, including interviewing at least one witness only the defence had talked to up to that point.

Photo by Sgt Matthew McGregor/DND/File

On Wednesday, Crown prosecutors announced they no longer had a reasonable prospect of conviction, and stayed the proceedings. They said the new evidence provided greater context around Norman’s actions, and “revealed a number of complexities in the process that we were not aware of.”

The National Post has spoken to two sources with knowledge of the defence’s investigation. Neither source was a member of the prosecution or the defence team, who have said they must keep the new evidence confidential in part because of a separate court case on the same subject matter.

The defence’s findings raised multiple issues with the case against Norman, the sources said, but the most significant point was that the driving force behind the push for the Davie supply ship proposal came from the political level — specifically the Prime Minister’s Office and the defence minister’s office — not from within the Canadian Forces. Though Norman, who was commander of the navy at the time, recommended the Davie proposal, it was the politicians above him who chose to make it a top priority despite resistance from some in the military and the bureaucracy. The Crown’s case, by contrast, portrayed Norman as having attempted to manipulate the political system to orchestrate the delivery of his preferred ship.