Weeks of hearings and a parade of witnesses before two parliamentary committees have — at the very least — uncovered a cascade of contradictions in the Liberal government's approach to sexual misconduct in the military.
The first and most glaring disconnect involves Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan's long-held claim — which he repeated at Tuesday's defense committee hearing — that he could not look at supposed evidence of alleged misconduct involving former chief of the defense staff Gen. Jonathan Vance because doing so would insert him into the chain of evidence for a possible criminal case.
But the Department of National Defense took the extraordinary (some would argue unprecedented) step of allowing the complainants in the ongoing military police investigations into both Vance and his successor, Admiral Art McDonald, to give media interviews — possibly tainting the cases.
An expert in military law said he was left dumbfounded by the department's decision — and the apparent contradiction between that decision and the minister's pleas to protect the integrity of the investigations.
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