Harjit Sajjan (born 6 September 1970) was Minister of National Defense of Canada from 4 November 2015 to 26 October 2021, succeeding Jason Kenney and preceding Anita Anand. He was the first Sikh to hold the title, and he belonged to the Liberal Party of Canada.
Biography[]
Harjit Sajjan was born in Bombeli, Punjab, India on 6 September 1970, and Sajjan and his mother moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 1975 to join Harjit's father, who found employment at a sawmill. He went to school with the future hitman Bindy Johal, and he was baptized a Sikh so that he could get away from a bad crowd. He joined the Canadian Army in 1989, and he was was wounded while fighting in the Bosnian War; he also served in the police and as a Lieutenant-Colonel during the Afghanistan War. In 2011, he became the first Sikh to command a Canadian army reserve regiment, and he decided to enter politics in 2015 as a Liberal Party of Canada member. In 2015, he was elected to parliament for Vancouver South, defeating the Conservative Party of Canada incumbent Wai Young. That same year, he was also appointed Defense Minister, and he was surrounded by controversy when he claimed that he was the "mastermind" of Operation Medusa, in which the Canadian army handed over Taliban prisoners to the government of Afghanistan for torture. In 2021, he left the National Defense Ministry to become Minister of International Development.