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OTTAWA — Honest to Pete, it never changes here at the third-party records motion at the breach-of-trust trial of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman.

The defence team arrives at the downtown Ottawa courthouse all bright-eyed and cheerful, hoping that finally, this will be the day the government lawyers (their number is legion, and growing) will co-operate or perhaps that the documents they have been seeking for months will fall from the sky.

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Every time, they are doomed to disappointment, and probably, internally, rage.

As a reminder, the two sides — the defence team is one, with federal prosecutors and the Justice Department lawyers forming the impenetrable wall of government on the other — are fighting over documents the defence wants.

These are records the defence believes will show that Norman did nothing more than follow the wishes of the former Stephen Harper government in obtaining an interim Auxillary OIL Replenishment (iAOR) ship, that certainly he did nothing wrong or, at worst, that he did nothing that virtually everyone in Ottawa doesn’t do all the time, which is to say, treat information as hard currency.