Harjit Sajjan

Harjit Singh Sajjan (, ; born September 6, 1970) is a Canadian politician who has served as the minister of emergency preparedness and the president of the Privy Council since July 26, 2023.

Sajjan was born on September 6, 1970, in Bombeli, a village in the Hoshiarpur district of Punjab, India.

His 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.

Sajjan, along with his mother and older sister, immigrated to Canada in 1976, when he was five years old, to join their father who had left for BC 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 Sajjan and his sister would frequently join her.

Harjit Singh grew up in South Vancouver.

Sajjan joined The British Columbia Regiment (Duke of Connaught's Own) in 1989 as a trooper and was commissioned as an officer in 1991.

He eventually rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

He deployed overseas four times in the course of his career: once to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and three times to Afghanistan.

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 investigation.

Sajjan married Kuljit Kaur, a family physician in 1996, and they have a son and a daughter, Arjun and Jeevut.

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.

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.

Sajjan's first deployment to Afghanistan was shortly before the start of 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.

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.

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".

Sajjan was mentioned in dispatches for the usefulness of his tactical counterinsurgency knowledge in the planning and implementation of an unnamed operation in September 2006 to secure important terrain.

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, the Order of Military Merit award, and served as Aide-de-Camp to the lieutenant governor of British Columbia.

A member of the Liberal Party, Sajjan represents the British Columbia (BC) riding of Vancouver South in the House of Commons, taking office as member of Parliament (MP) following the 2015 election.

Sajjan served as the minister of national defence from 2015 to 2021 and minister of international development from 2021 to 2023.

Before his entry into politics, Sajjan worked as a detective in the Vancouver Police Department and was a lieutenant-colonel in the Canadian Army.

He is Canada's first Sikh minister of national defence, and was also the first Sikh Canadian to command a Canadian Army reserve regiment.

Sajjan was elected for the riding of Vancouver South during the 2015 federal election, defeating Conservative incumbent Wai Young.

Sajjan was appointed minister of national defence in the federal Cabinet, headed by Justin Trudeau, on November 4, 2015.

In an April 2017 public speech in New Delhi, Sajjan called himself "the architect" of Operation Medusa, a September 2006 Canadian offensive to remove Taliban fighters from around Kandahar.

He was also briefly acting minister of veterans affairs in February 2019 following the resignation of Jody Wilson-Raybould, until the appointment of Lawrence MacAulay to the portfolio.

His alleged links with the Khalistan movement have caused diplomatic friction with Punjab's former chief minister, Amarinder Singh.

Harjit Sajjan also has faced allegations from New Democratic Party (NDP) 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."

In September 2019, Sajjan attended an event that was held to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, for which he was subsequently criticized by the Conservatives.

A spokesperson for Sajjan said that he appeared in his capacity as a candidate for his riding and did not stay for long.