Harjit Sajjan

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Harjit Singh Sajjan (néed September 6, 1970) is a Canadian Liberal politician who served as both the new Minister of National Defence and a member of Parliament representing Vancouver South's riding.

He is Canada's first Sikh Minister of National Defence.

Sajjan was first elected in the federal election in 2015, defeating Conservative incumbent MP Wai Young.

Sajjan was sworn into Cabinet as Minister of National Defence, led by Justin Trudeau on November 4, 2015.

Sajjan was a detective investigating gangs for the Vancouver Police Department before politics, as well as a lieutenant-colonel in the Canadian Armed Forces honoured for his service in Afghanistan.

Sajjan was also the first Sikh Canadian to command a Canadian Army reserve unit.

Early and personal life

Sajjan was born in Bombeli, a village in Punjab's Hoshiarpur district. Kundan Sajjan, his father, was a head constable with the Punjab Police in India, and he is now a member of the World Sikh Organisation (WSO), a Sikh advocacy group. Sajjan, along with his mother and older sister, immigrated to Canada in 1976 to join their father who had left for BC two years earlier to work at a sawmill. When the family was rebuilding in their new home in Canada, his mother worked on berry farms in BC Lower Mainland, BC During the summer, when Sajjan and his sister would often visit her. Harjit Singh grew up in South Vancouver.

Sajjan married Kuljit Kaur, a family physician, in 1996, and they have two sons and a daughter, Arjun and Jeevut.

Sajjan was baptized as a Sikh as a youth, seeing it as a way to escape from a tumultuous crowd, such as his classmate Bindy Johal.

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Military and police career

Sajjan joined The British Columbia Regiment (Duke of Connaught's Own) in 1989 as a soldier and was posted as an officer in 1991. He climbed to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He has served in four countries over his career: once to Bosnia and Herzegovina, then to Afghanistan three times. After returning from his Bosnian deployment, Sajjan started his 11-year tenure as an officer with the Vancouver Police Department. With the department's gang crimes unit, which specializing in drug trafficking and organized crime investigation, he ended his work with the Vancouver Police Department as a detective.

Sajjan's first deployment to Afghanistan came shortly before the start of Operation Medusa in 2006, when he had to withdraw from his service in the Vancouver Police Department's gang unit. He was stationed in Kandahar with the 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group, and served as a liaison officer with the Afghan police. Sajjan discovered that government mismanagement was behind recruiting to the Taliban. Sajjan was charged with supporting Operation Medusa's general plan after revealing these findings to Brigadier General David Fraser.

Fraser rated Sajjan's leadership during the trial as "nothing less than stellar." When Sajjan returned to Vancouver, Fraser wrote a letter to the police department naming Sajjan "the best single Canadian intelligence asset in theater" and said that his service had saved "a number of coalition lives" and that the Canadian Forces should "seek his advice on how to upgrade our entire tactical intelligence curriculum and architecture." Sajjan was praised in dispatches for his tactical counter-insurgency expertise in the planning and execution of an unidentified operation in September 2006, which secured important terrain.

Sajjan returned to the Vancouver police but started his own consulting company that taught intelligence gathering methods to Canadian and American military personnel. Barnett Rubin, a Washington and Afghanistan strategist, began as a correspondence about Sajjan's views on how to solve the Afghan opium trade and expanded into a relationship as advisors to American military and diplomatic leaders in Afghanistan.

Sajjan returned to Afghanistan for another tour of service in 2009, requiring the Vancouver Police Department to take care of him. Sajjan had to leave the Vancouver Police Department for his third tour of service in 2010, when he was assigned as a special assistant to then Major-General James L. Terry, the commander of American forces in Afghanistan, after having already taken two leaves of absence.

When he was commissioned commander of The British Columbia Regiment in 2011, he became the first Sikh to command a Canadian Army reserve regiment (Duke of Connaught's Own).

In 2012, he was given the Meritorious Service Medal for diluting the Taliban's clout in Kandahar Province. He has also been given the Order of Military Merit award for his contribution to British Columbia's Lieutenant Governor, Aide-de-Camp.

Sajjan invented his own gas mask that worked with his beard and patented it in 1996. His Sikh beliefs require him to maintain his facial hair, which avoids the use of regular military gas masks.

Political career

During the 2015 federal election, Sajjan was elected to represent Vancouver South, defeating conservative incumbent Wai Young. On November 4, 2015, Sajjan was named minister of national defence in the federal Cabinet, which was led by Justin Trudeau. Following Jody Wilson-Raybould's departure, he briefly served as acting minister of veterans affairs in February 2019 before he was named Lawrence MacAulay to the portfolio.

Amarinder Singh, Punjab's former chief minister, has reportedly caused diplomatic friction with his alleged links with the Khalistan movement. Harjit Sajjan has been accused by the New Democratic Party (NDP) that he is "playing down" his links to the detainee scandal during [Afghanistan] combat mission [Medusa], where Canadians handed over prisoners to torture by Afghan authorities.

Sajjan attended an event in September 2019 to commemorate the People's Republic of China's founding, which was then mocked by the Conservatives. According to a Sajjan spokesperson, he appeared as a candidate for his riding and did not stay long.

Sajjan called himself "the architect" of Operation Medusa, a Canadian initiative to depose Taliban fighters from Kandahar in September 2017. Sajjan had made the same assertion in July 2015 during a BC program Discussions That Matter, claiming that GM Jonathan Vance, the head of the defense staff at the time, was "the architect" in the 2006 attack. Sajjan, a major in the Canadian Army reserve and a liaison officer to Task Force Kandahar, where large combat operations such as Medusa were traditionally carried out by generals and colonels, were usually carried out by generals and colonels.

One of the anonymous officers cited in the National Post referred to Sajjan's words as "a bald-faced lie," though others lauded him on a personal level and for his intelligence services, but later discovered his assertion "example" because the Operation Medusa's planning was joint. Sajjan may have been a skilled intelligence officer with significant intelligence in the lead-up to the operation, but "definitely not have been the chief planner," Canadian historian Jack Granatstein said. Granatstein said that although the mistake was not one that was worth resigning over, it would also jeopardize his service with the military. Sajjan's role in the operation, according to Christopher Vernon, a British officer who worked as chief of staff for NATO forces in Southern Afghanistan at Kandahar during Medusa, was "more integral" and that Sajjan was a "pivotal actor" in the mission. Vernon said that Sajjan had worked "hand-in-glove" with the Australian lieutenant colonel who was the chief planner and that without Sajjan's intelligence service, the operation would not have occurred. Brigadier-General David Fraser had also praised Sajjan's crucial role in Operation Medusa.

Sajjan apologised for the success of Operation Medusa, which he apologised to members of the Canadian Forces, the United States Armed Forces, and the Afghan Armed Forces involved in the operation, adding that the Canadian Forces' successes were due to all members of the Canadian Forces that were involved. Sajjan also admitted that describing himself as "the architect" was inaccurate, and praised Brigadier-General David Fraser for leading the team that planned the mission.

In the face of calls from the opposition for him to resign, Sajjan was helped by Justin Trudeau. In the House of Commons, the Conservative Party of Canada proposed a no confidence vote in Sajjan.

Sajjan was shifted from defence minister to minister of international affairs in a cabinet reshuffle in October 2021.

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