Dear editor,
There is an aspect of the Mark Norman affair that baffles me. Former cabinet ministers McKay, O鈥橳oole and Kenny suddenly showed up saying they had material evidence to provide on the case a full year after the charges were laid. Apparently they wondered why the RCMP hadn鈥檛 come calling but remained silent.
If an associate of mine was facing criminal charges and I had information that would exonerate them, I would like to think I would make that known immediately, not wait for a year. The alleged breach of trust was said to have occurred while Kenny, O鈥橳oole and McKay were in cabinet, which is, of course, why they have knowledge of the event. In spite of the fact that their party is all about minding the public purse, they sat on their information for a year, leaving their associate twisting in the wind while enormous investigative and prosecutorial expenses rose. What could their purpose have been?
It is interesting to me that the trigger for their finally coming forward appears to be the offer of Andrew Leslie to testify for the defence. Now their hand was forced.
I suspect that they couldn鈥檛 remain silent because Leslie鈥檚 testimony would make them look complicit.
The only rational motive I can think of for sitting on their evidence is that they collectively decided to let the investigation drag on until shortly before the federal election in order to maximize the impact of their revelation. Or did all three of them independently decide Norman wasn鈥檛 worth their precious time to bother with?
Then there is the RCMP. I don鈥檛 believe that they accidentally missed a step by not interviewing the people whose trust it is that Norman was alleged to have breached. They were his employers.
If the omission was intentional, why?
Ken Kemper,
Comox
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