Harjit Sajjan

Early and personal life

Harjit Singh Sajjan was born on September 6, 1970 in Bombeli, a village in the Hoshiarpur district of Punjab, India. Sajjan's father, Kundan Sajjan, was a Head constable with the Punjab Police in India, and is currently a member of the World Sikh Organization (WSO), a Sikh advocacy group. Harjit Singh, along with his mother and older sister, emigrated to Canada in 1976, when he was five years old, to join their father who had left for British Columbia two years earlier to work at a sawmill. While the family was getting established in their new life in Canada, his mother worked on berry farms in BC Lower Mainland during the summer where Harjit Singh and his sister would frequently join her. Harjit Singh grew up in a neighbourhood in South Vancouver.

Harjit Singh married Kuljit Kaur, a family physician, in 1996, and they have a son and a daughter.

Sajjan was baptized as a Sikh when he was a teenager, seeing it as a way to get away from a bad crowd, such as his classmate Bindy Johal.

Military and police career

Sajjan joined The British Columbia Regiment (Duke of Connaught's Own) in 1989 as a trooper and was commissioned in 1991. He eventually rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He was deployed overseas four times in the course of his career: once to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and three times to Afghanistan. Sajjan was wounded during his service in Bosnia. Sajjan began his 11-year career as an officer of the Vancouver Police Department after returning from his Bosnian deployment. He ended his career with the Vancouver Police Department as a detective with the department's gang crimes unit specializing in drug trafficking and organized-crime investigator.

Sajjan's first deployment to Afghanistan was right before Operation Medusa in 2006, during which he took leave from his work in the Vancouver Police Department's gang squad. He deployed with the 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group in Kandahar and worked as a liaison officer with the Afghan police. His fluency in Punjabi, his first language, allowed him to be understood by Urdu-speaking Afghans without translators, especially by village leaders who were invaluable to his intelligence gathering. Sajjan found that corruption in the Afghan government was driving recruitment to the Taliban. After reporting these findings to Brigadier General David Fraser, Sajjan was tasked with helping the general plan aspects of Operation Medusa.

During Operation Medusa, four Canadian soldiers under Sajjan's command were killed in the fighting. Fraser evaluated Sajjan's leadership during the operation as "nothing short of brilliant". When Sajjan returned to Vancouver, Fraser sent a letter to the police department which called Sajjan "the best single Canadian intelligence asset in theatre", stated that his work saved "a multitude of coalition lives", and noted that the Canadian Forces should "seek his advice on how to change our entire tactical intelligence training and architecture".

Upon his return, Sajjan left his position with the Vancouver Police, but stayed as a reservist and started his own consulting business that taught intelligence gathering techniques to Canadian and American military personnel. He also consulted for US policy analyst and Afghanistan expert Barnett Rubin, which began as a correspondence over Sajjan's views on how to tackle the Afghan opium trade and evolved into a collaboration as advisers to American military and diplomatic leaders in Afghanistan.

Sajjan returned to Afghanistan for another tour of duty in 2009, taking another tour of leave from the Vancouver Police Department to do so. Having already taken two leaves of absence, Sajjan had to leave the Vancouver Police Department for his third tour of duty in 2010, during which he was assigned as a Special Assistant to then Major-General James L. Terry, the commander of American forces in Afghanistan.

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

He was bestowed with the Meritorious Service Medal in 2012 for diluting the Taliban's influence in Kandahar Province. He has also been awarded the Canadian Peacekeeping Service Medal. He also received the Order of Military Merit award. He also served as an Aide-de-Camp to the Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia.

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

In an April 18, 2017 public speech in New Delhi, he referred to himself as "the architect" of Operation Medusa. That claim was criticized by retired military officers, one of whom called it a "bald-faced lie." Sajjan subsequently apologized.

False Claims Regarding Military Role

On April 17th 2017, Saijan made statements during a public speech in New Dehli in which he embellished events surrounding a key Afghan military action. He described himself as the "architect" of Operation Medusa, a 2006 Canadian forces offensive to designed to remove Taliban fighters from districts around Kandahar:

“If I could quote him, he said I was the architect of Operation Medusa, one of the biggest operations since the Korean War that Canada has led. We took the fight hard to the Taliban,” 

That claim was immediately criticized by retired military officers, one of whom called it a "bald-faced lie." Eventually, Sajjan took to social media to issue a full apology in a Twitter post that referred readers to a fuller explanation on his Facebook page saying he had “made a mistake” in describing his role at the event. However, the apology was only issued after several days of social media ridicule and further evidence emerged he had made the false claim before. In July 2015, he was recorded during an episode of the B.C. program Conversations That Matter  stating that Gen. Jonathan Vance, the current chief of defence, saw him as a "key figure" in the 2006 offensive. In the fallout from the incident there were calls for Saijan's resignation along with heavy criticism from the public, veterans and the official opposition towards Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau for a failure to reprimand Saijan, who instead chose to support him:

"The minister of defence continues to have my full confidence"

After heavy pressure from veterans and the Canadian public, a vote of no confidence in Saijan was put forth by the Conservative Party of Canada in the House of Commons, which was eventually defeated by the majority Liberal party under the direction of Justin Trudeau, drawing even more criticism.

Political career

Sajjan was elected for the riding of Vancouver South during the 2015 federal election, defeating Conservative incumbent MP Wai Young. Sajjan was appointed Minister of National Defence in the federal Cabinet, headed by Justin Trudeau, on November 4, 2015.

His alleged links with the Khalistan movement have caused diplomatic friction with Punjab's chief minister, Amarinder Singh. Harjit Sajjan also has faced allegations from the New Democrats that he is "playing down his connections to the detainee controversy during the [Afghanistan] combat mission [Medusa], where Canadians handed over prisoners to torture by Afghan authorities."

Honours and decorations

Sajjan received the following honours and decorations during and after his military career.