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It is unclear why exactly the government appears ready to end the case.

Norman, who is charged with a single count of breach of trust for allegedly leaking cabinet secrets about the government’s $700-million shipbuilding deal, was the No. 2 in the Canadian Forces until his temporary suspension in January of 2017.

He wasn’t charged by the RCMP until March of 2018.

Now more than a year later it is unclear why exactly the government appears ready to end the case.

One of the prosecution’s biggest hurdles was in proving one of what are called the “essential elements” of the offence of breach of trust, in particular that Norman had the intent of using his office “for a purpose other than the public good.”

That usually translates to having had a corrupt or dishonest intention.

And yet the government has never even alleged that Norman personally benefited in any way from his alleged leaking.

His lawyers, Marie Henein and Christine Mainville, have always maintained that, as they put it in a third-party records application last fall, “Vice-Admiral Norman is not the right person standing trial.”

The charge alleges that Norman leaked the secret information to a former CBC journalist and a Quebec shipbuilding firm.

That firm, Chantier Davie, had been selected by the former Stephen Harper government to provide a badly needed supply ship – basically a floating gas station – in a sole-source contract in the fall of 2015.

The Harper Conservatives lost that election, and in November, one of the new Trudeau government’s first acts of business was to discuss that contract — with former Treasury Board president Scott Brison arriving at an ad hoc cabinet meeting with a letter of complaint from Davie competitor Irving asking that the new government take a second look at the deal.