On Thursday, after much hinting in the budget, defence minister Harjit Sajjan announced that the government would be hiring yet another former Supreme Court justice to help them deal with the issue of sexual misconduct within the military because they totally listened to the last one they hired and implemented all of her recommendations.  Or not.  In six years, the bulk of the recommendations from the Deschamps Report have gone unfulfilled in any substantive way, and in particular the need for an independent reporting mechanism for survivors of sexual misconduct, and for Sajjan to launch another process with another former Supreme Court justice is a signal that there is a problem with his leadership.  Sajjan has lost the moral authority to lead the Canadian Forces through its transformation, and it's time he resigns.

For a government that has pledged to change the toxic culture within the military and end the scourge of sexual misconduct in its ranks, they need a minister with credibility to do it.  Sajjan does not have that credibility.  Part of this is in how he handled the allegations regarding former Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance or rather, didn't handle.  While one can appreciate that Sajjan did not want to politically insert themselves into an investigation, the fact that he didn't even want to see what the allegations were when the military ombudsman brought them to his attention raises doubts, as does the fact that he remained mightily incurious about the investigation as it was proceeding or not proceeding.  When it didn't go anywhere, did he follow up at any point?  Apparently not, which is a problem when he is the person who is responsible to Parliament for the conduct of the Canadian Forces and its CDS.

This fact cannot be understated there is nobody above the CDS.  This is where civilian control begins, and Sajjan had an obligation to ensure that civilian control was being exercised.  He did not.  Likewise, Sajjan's deep incuriosity extended to doing the homework in choosing Vance's successor, who immediately had to step aside to deal with allegations of misconduct in his past.  The fact that the chief of military personnel was also someone who had a reputation for misconduct was allowed to hold the position, without Sajjan properly exercising civilian oversight, is a glaring problem.  It also created a double standard that high-ranking officials like Vance or his successor would not be touched by Operation Honour while junior officers were and Sajjan not taking responsibility for the oversight that was his job just makes that double standard all the more glaring.

The refusal to take responsibility is another reason that Sajjan must go.  The government has (rightfully) been preaching ministerial responsibility as they push back against having staffers testify at committee, but ministerial responsibility means the minister has to actually take responsibility, and Sajjan has not.  In fact, he's been caught in lies at the committee, and had to go back to correct the record, and hasn't salvaged his own reputation, nor that of the PM.  He's lost any credibility as the person responsible to Parliament for the department, and it's simply untenable that he remains in that position.

The fact that Sajjan did not push to fully implement the Deschamps Report in six years is another indictment against him.  There is no good explanation for why he did not make more progress, most especially around the creation of an independent body where survivors could come forward, and where reports could be tracked and problem personnel identified, rather than the scattered systems that exist now that don't interact.  Now, perhaps some of this can be attributed to the Liberals' usual problems of implementing half-measures to make it look like they're acting on a problem while they move onto something else.  Perhaps some of this is about a lack of bureaucratic capacity to do the work (which again, as minister he must take responsibility for).  If he could not push to get the Deschamps recommendations implemented, how can there be any confidence that he can implement the recommendations that come out of Louise Arbour's review in a year's time?

Even with the announcement of Arbour's appointment, it was another show of weakness on Sajjan's part.  There is a demonstrable problem in Canadian politics, where politicians of all stripes refuse to act on tough issues until they are seen to be made to, kicking and screaming, by the Supreme Court of Canada, and putting this kind of work on retired justices is one more iteration of that.  He needs to be able to make decisions rather than punt them to someone who has more public credibility than he has, and that's a problem.  He failed.  He has demonstrated that he won't be held to account for his failures, and that goes against the message that needs to be sent to everyone in the military that everyone can be held to account, from top to bottom.  If he can't be held to account, how can they expect anyone else in the Forces can?

Which leads us to our next obvious question who should replace Sajjan?  Aside from the obvious joke of this being one more job for Chrystia Freeland, who has quite enough on her plate, we must resist the temptation of putting anyone else with a military background in the position.  As someone who was still active in the military at the time, Sajjan should never have been appointed to the position, because it undermines the crucial need for civilian control.  And as much as I would balk at the usual trope of putting a woman in charge to clean up sexual misconduct, and being set up to fail for it, there is someone in Cabinet already who has the necessary gravitas and intellectual heft to get a tough job done, and that is Catherine McKenna, who is currently being underutilized in her current job as infrastructure minister.  Will Trudeau agree?  That remains to be seen, but what is clear is that Sajjan can no longer remain in his position.  The sooner he falls on his sword, the sooner the work of cleaning up the Forces can begin in earnest.

Photo Credit: Ottawa Citizen