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A similar comment was contained in the fact-sheet, which was posted to the Justice Department’s website and sent to other journalists.

Except Justice Heather Perkins-McVey has previously questioned why it is taking the government so long to gather the requested documents, which she must review before deciding whether they should be released to Norman’s lawyers.

The tweets, copies of which were provided by Henein’s office to The Canadian Press, have since been deleted and Henein told the court during a brief pre-trial hearing Monday that the department changed the fact-sheets after complaints from her office.

Copies provided by Henein’s office showed that the amendments included removing the comment about Perkins-McVey directing the department to produce the documents at a certain pace.

Henein nonetheless questioned why Justice Canada officials felt the need to comment publicly on the case, adding that the department has been posting statements that “we take the position are inaccurate.”

“We’ve made our position known in writing to the Department of Justice as to the propriety of that sort of behaviour,” she said. “We take issue with a number of the statements that they posted.”

Justice Canada spokesman Ian McLeod said Monday that tweets were sent to two journalists “as media relations outreach.”

“We later removed the tweets, and are providing clarifications to media directly via e-mail,” he said.

The court also heard that an abuse-of-process hearing scheduled for next week, in which Norman’s lawyers were to argue that the case against him should be tossed, will be delayed because they still don’t have the requested documents.