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In laughter, there is often truth. In his speech at the Press Gallery Dinner a few weeks ago, Andrew Scheer was joking when he said that for Justin Trudeau, “SNC-Lavalin is a good dry run for the Mark Norman trial.”

As we now know, there will be no trial — the breach of trust charge against the vice-admiral was stayed last week.

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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or John Ivison: Investigation into Norman affair is doomed, but Trudeau still likely to take damage Back to video

But for Trudeau, the SNC smash-up provided him with a salutary lesson in how not to manage his way through a crisis: in future, don’t provide an articulate-but-hostile witness a platform to eviscerate your government.

That’s why the opposition move to have the House of Commons’ standing committee on national defence investigate the government’s conduct in Norman affair is doomed.

The Conservative and NDP members have banded together to urge the committee to call the prime minister, Norman, defence minister Harjit Sajjan, Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance and 10 other ministers, former ministers, MPs, staffers and former advisers to appear and testify.