Charging Norman was the latest in a series of colossal botchings that have trailed the Liberal government like residue on a sinking ship

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals ought to rename the supply ship at the heart of the suddenly abandoned case against Vice-Admiral Mark Norman. I’m thinking the Disastro would be an appropriate appellation.

The charge against Norman was dropped Wednesday, the latest in a series of mistakes, missteps and colossal botchings that have trailed the Liberal government like residue on a sinking ship.

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The public prosecution service said it was quitting the case because there was no longer a reasonable chance of success. New information provided “greater context … that we were not aware of,” said federal prosecutor Barbara Mercier, which would seem to mean a respected naval officer with a lifetime of service was dumped from his job and subjected to public humiliation over a matter of context.

Photo by Sean Kilpatrick/CP

They might as well have blamed the retreat on The Curse of the Handsome Prime Minister. There was a time when anything Trudeau touched seemed to turn to gold, or at least another cover photo. Now it’s all dross. Dross, dross, dross. And as Gerald Butts — newly hired to share his climate skills with an American consulting firm — could attest, too much dross is bad for the environment, especially the political one.

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The case against Norman has had the smell of death for some time. You may recall that former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, in her famous phone conversation with senior bureaucrat Michael Wernick, compared the Norman case with the one involving SNC-Lavalin

“The cases are not dissimilar. The principle, or the integrity, of how we act and respond to the tools we have available and what we should and shouldn’t do, again,” she told him. She was more accurate than she could have known: the Lavalin situation, of course, spiralled into crisis and confusion. Now the Norman file has joined it.

The case against Norman has had the smell of death for some time

In trying to pin a breach of trust charge on Norman, there have been plenty of examples of “what we should and shouldn’t do.” For example, don’t try to blame one senior officer for alleged leaks when there’s plenty of evidence that the information in question was being shared all over Ottawa by various insider chatterboxes. Don’t expect the chief of defence staff to impress anyone by loftily declaiming that he hadn’t bothered to keep notes when conferring with the prime minister. Don’t respond to a request for documents with a desultory search, a bundle of redacted memos and a 60-page missive to the prime minister that is completely blacked out

Don’t expect help from witnesses who admit, in their “search” for documents, they didn’t even check their own phone. Or from information indicating top defence officials long ago learned to foil such requests by making up code names that wouldn’t turn up in search requests. When Andrew Leslie, a former general and star Liberal recruit, indicates he’s willing to testify on Norman’s behalf , have an answer ready when asked why the government is paying Leslie’s legal expenses but not Norman’s. And when someone like Leslie has provided plenty of advance warning of his intentions, don’t wait until the eve of an election to let it become known on the same day he says he’s quitting the government — which welcomed him with such ballyhoo — after just one term.

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Photo by Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Trudeau must be wondering when all the pain will stop. From the time he decided to combine his trip to India with a costume show, it’s been one stumble after another for the prime minister and his government, which now seems to bounce helplessly from one catastrophe to the next. On the same day word emerged on the Norman file, byelection voters in the British Columbia riding of Nanaimo-Ladysmith reduced the Liberal candidate to fourth place with just 11 per cent of the vote, less than half its share in the previous election. Equally ominous was the success of the Greens in stealing the riding from New Democrats, a sign that Liberal hopes of winning over disaffected NDPers might not work out as hoped.

Without those votes, the Trudeau camp has less chance of replacing the support it’s lost in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces, which it needs to counter the wall of disaffection that has arisen from Ontario to the Pacific in the wake of bungled battles over pipelines, carbon taxes, trade troubles and the distinct impression that this is a government that sees its core interests stretching all the way from Montreal to Ottawa and back again.

Trudeau must be wondering when all the pain will stop

Speaking of Montreal, while B.C. voters were turning their eyes to the Greens, reports indicated that executives at Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin had alerted investors they might break up the company and sell off the parts, the better to unlock value that’s been beaten down by past scandals and the looming criminal trial on charges of bribery and fraud. The prime minister and his top aides and officials sought mightily to blame Wilson-Raybould for the mess they made of their rescue attempt on the company, only to have public sympathy side mainly with her. Lavalin’s continued troubles suggest there’s far more to the situation than one recalcitrant minister: a company whose prosperity depends solely on its ability to escape a day in court is not what most onlookers would hold up as a national icon.

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Pain is never endless, and eventually an end does arrive. For Trudeau, that day could come in October, when the next election is due. Looking back, he will have a lot of causes to cite. A great many of them will lead straight back to his door.