OTTAWA — A federal public servant was accused Tuesday of trying to undercut cabinet’s decision-making powers by intentionally leaking sensitive documents about a $700-million shipbuilding project.
Crown prosecutor Mark Covan levelled the accusation during opening arguments in the breach of trust trial for Matthew Matchett, who is an analyst with the federal Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.
“Cabinet is composed of ministers who are elected representatives. They make decisions. Oftentimes they are among the most significant decisions that our government makes, and they are accountable to Parliament for those decisions,” Covan told jury members in an Ottawa courtroom.
“This case is about that decision-making process. This case is about the Crown’s allegations that Mr. Matchett attempted to corrupt, influence or exercise partiality in relation to that decision-making process. It was not his decision. This decision belonged to cabinet.”
Matchett was charged with one count of breach of trust in February 2019.
He has pleaded not guilty.
The trial, which began Monday, is scheduled to run for four weeks.
The shipbuilding project in question related to a deal negotiated by the Harper government in 2015 for Quebec shipyard Chantier Davie to lease a converted civilian vessel to the government to act as a temporary supply vessel for the Royal Canadian Navy.
The Crown’s first witness, longtime lobbyist Brian Mersereau, was representing Davie at the time. He testified on Tuesday that the deal was for all intents and purposes finalized before the Harper Conservatives were ousted by the Trudeau Liberals in October 2015.
That’s why Mersereau and his client were surprised and concerned to learn the Liberals were planning to discuss the project at a secret cabinet committee meeting that November.
“It wasn’t obvious as to why the new government had to take this and put it back, in essence, to a new cabinet,” Mersereau said. Asked by Covan about the potential consequences, Mersereau said: “The obvious one: they could be cancelled (or) delayed.”
Those concerns were particularly pronounced given what Mersereau said was a looming deadline at the end of the month for the deal to be officially approved by the government or Davie would lose access to the vessel, which was owned at the time by a European firm.
Dressed in a green checkered shirt and brown coat and moving slowly due to what he said was a recent car accident, Mersereau, who currently serves as chairman of Hill+Knowlton Strategies and still represents Davie, said he could not recall exactly how he met Matchett.
However, the veteran lobbyist testified that he had been in semi-regular contact with the public servant and reached out around that time to try to find out what was happening with the shipbuilding project, which the Liberals later approved.
The government has been leasing the Asterix from Davie since January 2018 while the navy waits for two permanent new support vessels to be built by Seaspan Shipyards in Vancouver.
The five-year leasing arrangement is set to expire next year, though the government has an option to extend it another five years or buy the vessel. The first permanent support ship was supposed to be delivered in 2023, but that schedule is now up in the air.
Court heard that shortly after Mersereau spoke with Matchett, a plain brown envelope containing several documents was delivered to his office.
Emails between Mersereau and Matchett were also filed in court as evidence, including one sent from Matchett’s email address to the lobbyist saying: “I’ve got everything, the motherlode.”
Mersereau initially told the court that he could not recall which documents were in the envelope, aside from a draft letter to federal cabinet about the Davie deal and some other unclassified material about the government’s broader shipbuilding procurement plan.
He later said the documents included a PowerPoint presentation about the Asterix marked: “Confidence of the Queen’s Privy Council,” which is how the government designates documents as cabinet secrets.
However, Mersereau was insistent under questioning that he could not remember having been given a draft memorandum to cabinet about the ship and deal.
Mersereau did tell the court that he tried to use the information that he was given to try to get media outlets, including the CBC, to write a story about “one more shipbuilding saga.”
Asked who sent the information, Mersereau said: “I suspected it was Mr. Matchett because I was speaking with nobody else who would send it to me out of the blue.”
Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Michael Johnston, Mersereau said the federal government would have been on the hook for millions of dollars in costs had the Liberals not approved the deal by Nov. 30, 2015.
He also agreed with Johnston’s assertion that the deal was important for the navy, which was without a support ship at the time following the early retirement of its two existing such vessels, as well as Davie and various marine industry firms in Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
Johnston’s cross-examination will continue on Wednesday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 7, 2022.
OTTAWA – A federal inquiry into foreign interference is slated to hear today from current and former politicians who have been singled out by meddlers.
Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, Conservative MP Michael Chong and New Democrat MP Jenny Kwan have all been identified publicly as targets of interference by China.
The inquiry’s latest hearings are focusing on the capacity of federal agencies to detect, deter and counter foreign meddling.
The hearings, scheduled to continue through Oct. 16, will be somewhat broad in scope, examining democratic institutions and the experiences of diaspora communities.
Beginning Oct. 21, the commission will then hold a week of policy consultations, including a series of roundtable discussions featuring experts, to encourage recommendations.
The inquiry’s final report is due by the end of the year.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
FREDERICTON – Grant Jordan was driving to a friend’s house on Aug. 31 when he started feeling tightness in his chest. He immediately returned home and asked his wife, Naomi, to take him to the hospital, a five-minute drive away.
They arrived at the Sussex Health Centre at 8:48 p.m., but the hospital in southern New Brunswick had closed 18 minutes earlier — the result of a “temporary” change made two years ago. Using an intercom, Jordan told a hospital employee that he thought he was having a heart attack.
“And they said, ‘Well, we’re closed. So if you want, I can call 911 for you,'” Jordan, 49, said in a recent interview from his home in Piccadilly, N.B., recalling how he had to retreat to the parking lot, pain radiating through his jaw, elbows and ears.
It was 9:24 p.m. by the time an ambulance arrived. At the hospital in Saint John, 75 kilometres away, Jordan was immediately taken to an operating room where two stents were inserted into arteries leading from his heart.
The couple is now calling on the provincial government to do something about hospitals that are having to close early.
Horizon Health Network, which oversees the Sussex Health Centre, did not respond to a request for comment.
“I was just lying there on the sidewalk in the parking lot,” Jordan said. “I was just in a lot of pain, and I wanted it to stop.”
He confirmed that two hospital employees in Sussex eventually offered him some nitroglycerine — a drug used to relieve chest pain during a heart attack. But they told him they could lose their jobs for helping someone after the emergency room had closed, he said.
“It was pretty close to a widow-maker,” his wife said, adding that her husband’s chance of survival was pegged at 20 per cent. “It’s pretty bad when the malls and coffee shops are open later than the hospital is.”
New Brunswick’s health-care system has come under intense scrutiny as the province prepares for a election on Oct. 21.
Critics have taken aim at Premier Blaine Higgs’s majority government for responding to health-care labour shortages by hiring private companies that offer travel nurses, who work on temporary assignments across the health network.
The government spent almost $174 million on travel nurse contracts between Jan. 1, 2022, and Feb. 29, 2024.
Hospitals were given the go-ahead to sign these contracts after the death of a patient in a Fredericton hospital emergency room in July 2022.
Paula Doucet, president of the New Brunswick Nurses Union, has said the money should have been used to hire more than 1,000 nurses, which would ease shortages in hospitals and other parts of the health-care system.
The provincial government needs to make health care a priority, Jordan said.
“Why can’t we pay (doctors and nurses) to stay and work here?” he asked. “It shouldn’t really be that big a deal.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Rookie Wyatt Langford homered, doubled twice and became the first Texas player this season to reach base five times, struggling Jonah Heim delivered a two-run single to break a sixth-inning tie and the Rangers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 13-8 on Tuesday night.
Leody Taveras also had a homer among his three hits for the Rangers.
Langford, who also walked twice, has 12 homers and 25 doubles this season. He is hitting .345 in September.
“I think it’s really important to finish on a strong note,” Langford said. “I’m just going to keep trying to do that.”
Heim was 1-for-34 in September before he lined a single to right field off Tommy Nance (0-2) to score Adolis García and Nathaniel Lowe, giving Texas a 9-7 lead. Heim went to the plate hitting .212 with 53 RBIs after being voted an All-Star starter last season with a career-best 95 RBIs. He added a double in the eighth ahead of Taveras’ homer during a three-run inning.
Texas had 13 hits and left 13 men on. It was the Rangers’ highest-scoring game since a 15-8 win at Oakland on May 7.
Matt Festa (5-1) pitched 1 1/3 scoreless innings to earn the win, giving him a 5-0 record in 13 appearances with the Rangers after being granted free agency by the New York Mets on July 7.
Nathan Eovaldi, a star of Texas’ 2023 run to the franchise’s first World Series championship, had his worst start of the year in what could have been his final home start with the Rangers. Eovaldi, who will be a free agent next season, allowed 11 hits (the most of his two seasons with Texas) and seven runs (tied for the most).
“I felt like early in the game they just had a few hits that found the holes, a few first-pitch base hits,” said Eovaldi, who is vested for a $20 million player option with Texas for 2025. “I think at the end of the day I just need to do a better job of executing my pitches.”
Eovaldi took a 7-3 lead into the fifth inning after the Rangers scored five unearned runs in the fourth. The Jays then scored four runs to knock out Eovaldi after 4 2/3 innings.
Six of the seven runs scored against Toronto starter Chris Bassitt in 3 2/3 innings were unearned. Bassitt had a throwing error during Texas’ two-run third inning.
“We didn’t help ourselves defensively, taking care of the ball to secure some outs,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said.
The Blue Jays’ Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had a double and two singles, his most hits in a game since having four on Sept. 3. Guerrero is hitting .384 since the All-Star break.
TRAINER’S ROOM
Blue Jays: SS Bo Bichette (calf) was activated and played for the first time since July 19, going 2 for 5 with an RBI. … OF Daulton Varsho (shoulder) was placed on the 10-day injured list and will have rotator cuff surgery … INF Will Wagner (knee inflammation) was placed on the 60-day list.
UP NEXT
Rangers: LHP Chad Bradford (5-3, 3.97 ERA) will pitch Wednesday night’s game on extended five days’ rest after allowing career highs in hits (nine), runs (eight) and home runs (three) in 3 2/3 innings losing at Arizona on Sept. 14.
Blue Jays: RHP Bowden Francis (8-4, 3.50) has had two no-hitters get away in the ninth inning this season, including in his previous start against the New York Mets on Sept. 11. Francis is the first major-leaguer to have that happen since Rangers Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan in 1989.
