Ivison: It is inexplicable that the Opposition is focusing its fire on Telford when it is clear that this is Sajjan’s mess.
The minister’s appointment was always an accident waiting to happen, given Vance was his superior when the two men were in Afghanistan. Vance was commander of the Canadian Task Force in Kandahar when Sajjan completed his second and third tours in Afghanistan as an intelligence officer in the Canadian reserves. As one veteran put it when considering Sajjan’s subsequent appointment as Vance’s political master: “That’s awkward. Odd in the extreme. It tied them together.”
This affair seems a straightforward case of the minister doing his old boss a solid favour, by turning a blind eye when he should have acted. Vance was in charge of rooting out the sexualized culture in the military that had resulted in former Supreme Court justice Marie Deschamps recommending in her 2015 report that the Forces create an independent centre for accountability for sexual assault and harassment. Not only did Vance resist implementing that central recommendation, he was subsequently accused of personal impropriety.
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