Vice-Admiral Mark Norman to retire rather than returning to duty
Posted June 26, 2019 2:58 pm.
OTTAWA — The Department of National Defence says Vice-Admiral Mark Norman is retiring from the Canadian Forces.
The surprise announcement comes more than a month after Crown prosecutors stayed their politically charged breach-of-trust case against the military’s former second-in-command.
Norman said at the time that he wanted to return to duty, a plan that was welcomed by defence chief Gen. Jonathan Vance.
Instead, the Defence Department says Norman is choosing to retire and that his lawyers and those for the government arrived at a “mutually acceptable agreement.”
The details of that agreement, which was brokered with help from former chief justice of the Ontario Court of Appeal Warren Winkler, are confidential.
Norman was suspended from the military in January 2017 and later charged with breach of trust for allegedly leaking government secrets to a journalist and a Quebec shipyard.
The charge was stayed May 8 after new information uncovered by Norman’s lawyers undercut the Crown’s case.
The Canadian Press
