The bizarre story of how former defence minister Harjit Sajjan directed the Canadian Armed Forces to rescue 225 Sikhs from Afghanistan during the chaotic and dangerous evacuation of that city by Canadian and U.S. military personnel in 2021 can be interpreted in numerous ways.
As the Globe and Mail has reported, military sources have revealed they were directed to extricate 225 Sikhs — none of them Canadian citizens or with links to Canada — as Western forces hastily quit Kabul prior to the return of the Taliban.
Was it hubris on the part of Sajjan? Was he just showing a little swagger to friends that he had a fighting force at his disposal and could direct them at his will? Or was it simply ignorance? Did the defence minister — now the minister of Emergency Preparedness — not understand that in a situation such as this, his government should prioritize Canadians or those who had worked for this country?
Whatever the motivation, the House of Commons Committee on National Defence now plans to investigate the incident further, it was announced last week.
Sajjan said in a statement in June that, while he did provide direction to evacuate the Sikhs, he did so through an appropriate chain of command and he didn’t ask our military to give priority to the Sikhs over Canadian citizens and those with links to this country.
Military sources quoted by the Globe have said that directive meant their resources were spread more thinly than they should have been, at a time when there was a pressing need to vet people and process them and their passports. The paper also revealed the director of a Sikh foundation that had struck a deal with the federal government to accept some Afghan Sikhs had made thousands of dollars in donations to Sajjan’s Vancouver-area riding association around the same time as the request for the rescue.
It’s bad enough that this government nickels and dimes our armed forces on funding and equipment. If these allegations are true, it would seem it also believes our military is for hire.
To be clear: Our military personnel aren’t rent-a-cops, a private army if you will, to be used to dig out those from other nations stuck in awkward places.