At 2:07 p.m. on Nov. 17, 2015, a public servant named Matthew Matchett emailed a prominent Ottawa lobbyist to relay some exciting news.

“I got everything — the motherload,” Matchett’s email said. But it also said his BlackBerry phone was “caput,” and he needed to know where to drop off the material.

One minute later came the response: “Here if ok,” wrote Brian Mersereau of the public relations and lobbying firm Hill+Knowlton Strategies, which had Quebec-based Davie Shipbuilding as a major client. “Just leave it at front. Lots of funny folks wandering around.”

“I figured that’s why I asked,” Matchett replied less than a minute later.

Mersereau would later tell an RCMP investigator that when he arrived the next day at his office on Metcalfe Street, there was a package in a brown envelope waiting for him. Inside were documents that were to be presented at a meeting on Nov. 19, 2015, where a federal cabinet committee would debate the future of a $700-million project to acquire a supply ship for the navy from Davie. The RCMP would seize the documents, including a PowerPoint presentation deck and a memorandum to cabinet, in a raid of Mersereau’s office six months later.

The Nov. 19 meeting is at the centre of the RCMP’s case against Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, who faces a criminal charge of breach of trust over accusations he leaked classified information in a bid to prevent the government from cancelling the Davie project.

That meeting saw Liberal ministers decide to delay the project while they sought more information. Word of their decision immediately leaked to the media and, amid the resulting public scrutiny, the government soon reversed course. Furious over the leak, the government launched an internal probe; when that failed to turn up answers, it referred the file to the RCMP for a criminal investigation, resulting earlier this year in a single charge against Norman.

Norman’s lawyers argue the leak — specifically to CBC reporter James Cudmore — came not from Norman, but from Matchett through Mersereau. They argue Cudmore had already received the cabinet materials by the time he contacted Norman for his story, which ran the morning of Nov. 20.

The first detailed accounting of how Matchett allegedly leaked the cabinet material is in 700 pages of court documents released Friday, part of Norman’s lawyers’ application to the court to have the government turn over additional material they claim they need to mount his defence. The documents include portions of what the government has handed to Norman’s defence team so far, such as emails and RCMP witness statements. The allegations against Matchett, and the contents of the documents generally, have not been tested in court, and may not necessarily be entered as evidence in Norman’s trial.

It remains unclear why Norman has been criminally charged over cabinet leaks but Matchett has not. Norman denies revealing cabinet confidences and, in the run-up to his trial, scheduled for next summer, there has been no evidence yet disclosed that he leaked any documents.

Mersereau has signed an immunity agreement with the RCMP, revealed in court documents. But there is no sign that Matchett has immunity, and Norman’s lawyers Marie Henein and Christine Mainville say the RCMP has never even interviewed Matchett.

“This matter is still under investigation and, as such, we cannot comment further,” said RCMP spokesperson Christine L’Hébreux on Wednesday. She would not confirm whether Matchett is specifically under investigation.

However, Norman’s defence team is trying to learn more about Matchett. “The defence requires production of information relating to Mr. Matchett’s leaks and how his case was treated internally and by the RCMP,” reads a notice of application for third-party records Norman’s lawyers filed in October.

“Mr. Matchett’s leaks of classified documents relate to the very same cabinet meetings and subject matter at the centre of this prosecution. The information sought is also relevant to both the standard of conduct in Ottawa, the differing treatment of leaks in Ottawa, and the motivation for charging VAdm Norman.”

In November 2015, Matchett appears to have been working for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, a federal agency with a mandate to promote economic development in the region. More recently, he worked as an Ottawa-based director with Public Services and Procurement Canada. “The individual has been an employee of PSPC since January 2017,” said spokeswoman Michèle LaRose on Wednesday. She did not say whether Matchett is on leave.

The National Post and the Ottawa Citizen have made numerous attempts over several months to contact Matchett by email and phone, including on Wednesday, but he has not responded.

The email records filed with the court show Mersereau and Matchett had already been in contact earlier in the day on Nov. 17, when Matchett emailed Mersereau to alert him that the cabinet memo on the Davie project was “being reviewed today.” (This appears to be a reference to a pre-briefing ahead of the Nov. 19 meeting, which involved the chair and vice-chair of the cabinet committee and public servants from the Privy Council Office.)

A few hours later, Matchett emailed for instructions on where to drop off “the motherload.” In the emails released Friday, Matchett never explicitly said he was dropping off cabinet materials, and Mersereau told RCMP investigators they never discussed it afterward.

Mersereau told RCMP his reference to “funny people” was to other clients in his office that day from the Atlantic region, whom Matchett may have wanted to avoid running into.

I got everything — the motherload

He also told RCMP that he did not know how Matchett would have obtained the cabinet documents. As for motivation, Mersereau told them that due to his Atlantic-region job, Matchett would have been very familiar with Irving Shipbuilding, Davie’s East Coast rival.

“It applies to a lot of people on the East Coast, if you deal a lot with the Irvings they’re really hard to love,” Mersereau, who used to have the Irvings as a client, told the RCMP. “They can be tough people, the way they do business, so even lots of people whose job in government is, to some degree, is to support them in this, that and the other thing, it’s probably not their first love when they get up in the morning.”

He said he thought Matchett supported Davie’s project because it offered work to other Atlantic-region firms he claimed weren’t getting it from Irving. Prior to the November cabinet committee meeting, James Irving had sent four ministers a letter urging them to reconsider his company’s supply-ship proposal instead of Davie’s. Treasury Board President Scott Brison, a Nova Scotia MP, would cite the Irving letter at the meeting in arguing for the Davie project to be put on hold. Irving has consistently denied any attempt at political interference intended to undercut a shipbuilding rival.

“Did you have any discussion ever with (Matchett) about the fact that he maybe shouldn’t release information pertaining to government and things like this?” RCMP Sergeant Denis Beaudoin asked Mersereau at one point.

“No,” Mersereau responded. “None.”

The application for third-party records — the first major hearing of Norman’s case — will begin in Ottawa on Dec. 12.

With files from David Pugliese, Ottawa Citizen.