Sajjan's demise is imminent and he has only himself to blame

National Post, 20 May 2021

Why did Sajjan run so quickly away from a serious allegation against Vance? Is it possible that he thought he owed Vance a favour?

“There’s no question that Minister (Harjit) Sajjan is going to have to resign,” said NDP Leader Tom Mulcair. That was in May 2017. Mulcair was four years premature, but this week the undertakers moved into position.

Some “Liberal insiders” have been telling Ottawa reporters that it was remarkable that Sajjan lasted this long: more than five years after taking office and manifesting less than keen interest in the Deschamps report on sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces; and more than three years after being told about allegations against Gen. Jonathan Vance and stating flatly that he didn’t want to know about it.

That strategy was derelict when it was the chief of defence staff. It’s not possible when there are seven senior military officials under investigation.

Sajjan will soon be gone, the latest resignation in a government that has lost more senior personnel than any other in the history of Westminster parliaments: a governor general, finance minister, attorney general, health minister, clerk of the privy council, principal secretary to the prime minister, two chiefs of the defence staff — one just outgoing and the other just incoming — and now the pandemic vaccine logistics chief.

Even more remarkable is the fact that the parade was not sparked by one massive scandal, but rather a series of enormous, but separate, scandals.

Who’s next? At the head of the queue is the prime minister’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, who in 2018 seemed determinedly incurious about the Vance allegations. Sajjan will go, in part, to save Telford.

But go back to Mulcair’s prophecy in 2017. It might explain why Sajjan was so reluctant to even hear the allegations against Vance in the first place.

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