Minister of International Development Harjit Sajjan prepares to appear at the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, studying the government's response to the final report on the Special Committee on Afghanistan, in Ottawa, on April 26, 2023.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
One thing that Canadians have learned over the course of the past nine years is that, in this government, there is no such thing as a lethal scandal. Ministers don’t resign in disgrace. Public displays of contrition are verboten. No accusation is ever so egregious as to demand an actual response; no charge so serious as to merit sombre reflection. Ministers will deflect, reject, maybe explain a little bit. But they never, ever concede.
So it should have taken no one by surprise that Harjit Sajjan responded to a well-sourced report that he betrayed our country, our countrymen and women, and the allies who risked their lives to support us by turning it into an accusation.
The Globe and Mail reported last week that as defence minister, Mr. Sajjan instructed Canadian special forces to rescue about 225 Afghan Sikhs who were seeking refuge during the Taliban takeover in August, 2021. According to various sources, Mr. Sajjan’s directive took resources away from evacuation efforts of Canadian citizens and Afghans who had worked alongside our troops during its mission in Afghanistan.
Mr. Sajjan, who is now Canada’s Minister of Emergency Preparedness, said he received information about the Afghan Sikhs from a Canadian Sikh group (the directors of which, according to reporting by The Globe this week, donated to his riding association around the same time) and relayed that information to Canadian special forces, but he said that he “did not direct the Canadian Armed Forces to prioritize Sikhs above others.” When he was asked during a news conference last week to explain the difference between “directing” and “ordering” the military, he responded by calling The Globe’s report “utter b.s.” and suggested that racism motivated the reporting. “I didn’t think I’d be getting those questions if I wasn’t wearing a turban,” he said. “It needs to be called out.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used nearly the exact same mode of defence in early 2023 when he was asked about leaked reports on China’s attempted interference in Canadian elections. At first, he claimed the reporting was inaccurate (though he more politely used the phrase “many inaccuracies,” instead of “utter b.s.”). He then suggested that some of the reporting – specifically, about irregularities in the nomination race that elected Don Valley North MP Han Dong – was motivated by “anti-Asian racism.” It has since been publicly disclosed that Canada’s intelligence agency had credible information that Beijing was involved in transporting a bus of international students to vote for Mr. Dong.
Mr. Sajjan didn’t actually answer the question about how he draws a distinction between a direction and an order during that news conference, though Chief of the Defence Staff General Wayne Eyre later answered it for him: a direction essentially is an order. “We follow legal direction and the groups that were listed were part of … approved groups, so we got on with it,” he told The Canadian Press. He said his role is not to decide “whether the government priority was right or wrong.”
Having been defence minister for about six years by that point, Mr. Sajjan surely understood that there is no such thing as a “suggestion” from the Minister of National Defence to the military. Yet this attempt to split hairs over definitions was the same explanation that Mr. Trudeau leaned on to defend his actions during the SNC-Lavalin affair. At the time, he said he merely suggested then-attorney-general Jody Wilson-Raybould consider a deferred prosecution agreement for the beleaguered company; he didn’t instruct her to seek one.
For Mr. Sajjan, this report comes at the tail end of a ministerial tenure imbued with scandal: he exaggerated his role in a key battle during his tour in Afghanistan; his office hired a reserve officer from his old unit (who had been suspended for having a relationship with a subordinate) to work as an aide; he failed to act on recommendations to root out sexism in the military in a 2015 report by a former Supreme Court justice, and instead the government commissioned a new report by another former Supreme Court justice; he said he chose not to look at an allegation of sexual misconduct against then-chief of the defence staff Jonathan Vance when it was brought to his attention; he said he wasn’t reading e-mails during the Kabul evacuation.
But this accusation eclipses all the others, for how deeply Mr. Sajjan appears to have both perverted his power and betrayed his oath. The Canadians left behind in Afghanistan and the Afghans who bravely assisted our troops deserve answers. But in this government, there is no scandal too serious to merit actual introspection. No reporting that can’t be flipped around to malign the character of the reporters. Mr. Sajjan will continue to remain in cabinet. And shame on you for asking about it.