Nathalie Normandeau
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21 July 2020 16: 57
Updated at 17h18
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Procedures three times too long, according to the lawyers of Nathalie Normandeau
Isabelle Mathieu
The Sun
The public ministry has not cared about court delays in the case of Nathalie Normandeau since the spring of 2018, say his lawyers, who call for the arrest of these procedures three times too long.
The hearing of the motion to stay proceedings for unreasonable delay of the former deputy first minister in Quebec began Tuesday at the palace of justice of Quebec and must continue for at least three days.
The lawyers of Nathalie Normandeau, Me Ariane Gagnon-Rocque and Me Maxime Roy, submitted a table demonstrating that in their view, the proceedings against their client will have lasted about 57 months if the trial is held well in the fall of 2020.
With the judgment in Jordan, the supreme Court has enacted caps 18 months of delays for cases without the preliminary inquiry, as is the case of Ms. Normandeau, and 30 months for those with preliminary investigation. There are exceptions, depending on the complexity of the case.
Nathalie Normandeau was arrested in march 2016. It must respond to three charges – and not eight as in the beginning of the proceedings – abuse of trust, fraud against the government and corruption in municipal affairs. The withdrawal of charges by the DPCP, say to Me Maxime Roy, that the case no longer has the character of complexity that it had when the court has denied an initial request for a stay of proceedings in 2018, on the basis of the judgment in Jordan. The time periods were 25 months.
Nathalie Normandeau has performed acts to speed things up, tells Me Roy, demanded a separate trial, even if not to take advantage of some of the information expected by the other co-accused.
After the first decision, which established the time at 25 months, the public ministry should have been more diligent, says the lawyer of Nathalie Normandeau. “There has been no regard for the public ministry about the delays and their impact”, says Me Maxime Roy.
Prosecutors in the DPCP will be able to replicate later this week and submit their calculation of the delays not attributable to the defense.
Investigation oath: still at least a year
The investigation Oath of the EIB on the leaks to the UPAC, which is intimately linked to proceedings against Marc-Yvan Côté, Nathalie Normandeau, and their four co-defendants, will not be completed until at least one year.
Oath was launched at the end of October 2018 for finding the origin of leaks of information in the investigation files of the Unité permanente anticorruption (UPAC), and on the conduct of the Project, created precisely to elucidate the leaks, but that has itself been the subject of casting.
The subject of leaks to the UPAC is in the heart of the case brought against Marc-Yvan Côté and his co-defendants to the funding policy the occult. Marc-Yvan Côté has filed an application for stay of proceedings precisely because of the leaks from the police, orchestrated by the leadership of UPAC according to him.
The investigator of the EIB Michel Doyon explained Tuesday to the judge André Perreault of the Court of Québec, when seized of the request for a stay of proceedings, that the proposed Oath would last, at best, still a year and, at worst, still more than two years. “It is really impossible to assess, it really depends on the events that may occur”, has dropped Mr. Doyon.
The crisis of the COVID-19 has slowed down the investigation and made it difficult for the meetings with witnesses, ” says the investigator. The many disclosures of evidence to be done in multiple records of the UPAC becomes heavier as the workload of investigators, said Mr. Doyon.
