By Canadian Press

Lawyer for suspended public servant requests delay in shipbuilding leak case

Aug 30, 2019 | 7:36 AM

OTTAWA — A lawyer for a federal public servant accused of leaking cabinet secrets about a $700-million shipbuilding project is asking for a delay in the case until next year.

Matthew Matchett was charged with one count of breach of trust in February for allegedly leaking cabinet documents to a lobbyist representing Quebec’s Davie shipyard, and was supposed to have a preliminary inquiry in October.

At a court hearing this morning, Matchett’s lawyer, Matthew Day, is instead asking for delay the preliminary inquiry until next March because he needs more time to go through thousands of documents related to the case.

Many of those documents were seized during the RCMP investigation dubbed Project Anchor that led to charges against Matchett and retired vice-admiral Mark Norman, while others were provided to Norman’s lawyers before his case was dropped in May.

Crown prosecutor Mark Covan, however, is resisting a delay in part because he says the scope of the Crown’s case against Matchett — and the preliminary inquiry itself — is relatively narrow in scope.

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There are also concerns delaying the inquiry could eventually see Matchett’s case bump up against the Supreme Court’s Jordan decision from 2016, which imposed time limits on how long it can take for a criminal case to go to trial before it is deemed unreasonably delayed and tossed.

The Canadian Press