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Lieutenant-Colonel (ret.) Harjit Sajjan, Canada's Defence Minister

A soldiers story, Defence Minister Hajit Sajjan and his accusers
Honeymoon Bay, B.C.
Thursday, May 11, 2017
by: Brian Marlatat
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Soldiers telling great tales of battles fought, heroic exploits growing ever larger with every telling, celebrated in story, myth, song, and verse.  These things are the stuff of all cultures from King Arthur to Norse myth, Horatius at the Bridge, The Song of Roland, The Charge of the Light Brigade.  And we all know the Americans saved us and Private Ryan at Normandy in WWII and that Monty was "over-rated" (not American) because Steven Spielberg tells us so.
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Soldiers tales are the stuff of national pride, in some ways too much so.  We are human.
 
Lieutenant-Colonel (ret.) Harjit Sajjan, Canada's Defence Minister, is a Canadian hero and a three tour veteran of the War in Afghanistan we fought initially to show that another 9/11 will not be tolerated and later because a toady new prime minister who had sneered at Canada for staying out of the "Coalition of the Willing" origins of ISIS stayed too long in the Graveyard of Empires.
 
Minister, soldier, undercover police constable, intelligence officer, Harjit Sajjan was key to our operations in Afghanistan even if the word "architect" may go too far. "[H]is analysis was so compelling that it drove a number of large scale theatre-resourced efforts, including OPERATION MEDUSA," wrote Brigadier General David Fraser at the time as Commander CTF Aegis.
 
A soldier told a great tale of battles fought, heroic exploits and of his part in them.  They are justly legend, not entirely history. He, we, are human.
 
But there is another story. A political party that is not the Conservatives although it tells us so is calling for the minister's resignation because he misled us. They claim.
 
Integrity matters. The Minister's apology tells us so. But where is the apology from the former toady prime minister and all present members of his party in parliament who falsely claim to be Tory and who defame our hero?
 
They say it matters because the Minister must be relied on to make important choices, decisions. True, if his choices and decisions will be shaped by any way in which he misled us as they claim and as they have made while misleading us.
 
Choices like fixed date elections which neuter the Opposition and responsible government while claiming, falsely, that predecessor parties, the CA and Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, were agreed on their necessity. They were not, though falsely claimed by the toady prime minister.
 
Choices like Senate reform to make senators and parliament accountable to the provinces, replacing Canadian federalism with American federalism, because they are not the Tory party of Confederation but the Alliance party still seeking to  "change how this country is governed" to the drumbeat of continentalism. The toady prime minster misled us, pretended to be Tory, and did not resign.
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(Brian Marlatt is the Progressive Canadian candidate-of-record in South Surrey-White Rock and the author of the Progressive Conservative policy amendment defeating the proposal for fixed date elections at the PC Edmonton Conference in 2002 proposed by former members of the CA, and of PC Guiding Principles 236 and 237 on Senate Reform.)
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.Sources

Brigadier General David Fraser documentation quoted in full by Sandy Garossino, Here’s what Harjit Sajjan really did with Operation Medusa, The National Observer, April 29, 2017 http://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/04/29/analysis/heres-what-harjit-sajjan-really-did-operation-medusa

Paul Russell, Senate Advice to our prime minister, National Post, June 8, 2013.
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/week-in-letters-senate-advice-for-our-prime-minister .