OTTAWA — The Senate’s defence committee will finally get an answer on Monday over whether Vice-Admiral Mark Norman will agree to testify over the circumstances around his controversial prosecution.
Henein also said she’d only received the committee’s actual invitation requests this weekend, because they had been sent to a general email inbox at her law firm rather than to her directly. The Senate defence committee voted on May 28 to “examine and report on the circumstances that led the RCMP to lay, now stayed, criminal charges against Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, including the scope and nature of the involvement in that process by any other persons.”
Along with Norman, the motion named Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and Chief of the Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance as witnesses who should be invited for testimony. It also authorized the committee to invite anyone else it chooses. The delay over the committee’s study is in part because Norman’s testimony was prioritized above all else and the committee has been waiting to hear an answer. But it turns out there was miscommunication, as Henein was unaware until this weekend that the clerk had been emailing the formal invitation to her law firm’s general information inbox and not her direct email.