Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Harjit\u00a0Sajjan has his “full confidence” amid a growing controversy over the defence minister’s exaggerated claim he was the\u00a0“architect” of a major assault on the Taliban\u00a0in 2006.<\/p>\n
Interim Conservative Leader Rona\u00a0Ambrose accused Sajjan of “stolen valour” for taking credit for the actions of another, and called on Trudeau to fire him for dishonouring himself and the military.<\/p>\n
“What he did was wrong, and now he has lost the confidence of our men and women in uniform, and they need to have confidence in their leaders, especially when they’re putting their lives on the line,” she said. “So will the prime minister remove the minister of defence?”<\/p>\n
But Trudeau said Sajjan has served his country in a number of ways, as a police officer, a soldier and now as a cabinet minister. He made a mistake, apologized and took responsibility for it, the prime minister said.<\/p>\n
“When\u00a0we make a mistake, Canadians expect us to apologize and to acknowledge\u00a0that mistake. That’s what we did and that’s why the minister of defence continues to have my full confidence,” Trudeau told the House.<\/p>\n
Rona Ambrose calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to fire Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan<\/strong>0:47<\/p>\n Sajjan\u00a0briefly met with reporters before entering the House of Commons, again apologizing and saying he was “not here to make excuses.”<\/p>\n “I’m owning it. I’m learning from it and I’ll be a better person for it,” he said.<\/p>\n He reiterated his\u00a0apology in the House.<\/p>\n But NDP Leader Tom\u00a0Mulcair\u00a0accused\u00a0Sajjan\u00a0of telling\u00a0“a whopper” and said that simply saying sorry isn’t enough.<\/p>\n “That is not something you apologize for, it’s something that you have to step down for,” he said.<\/p>\n Tom Mulcair says Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan told a ‘whopper’ about his role in Operation Medusa<\/strong>0:49<\/p>\n MPs are back in Ottawa after a two-week break, and the controversy over\u00a0Sajjan\u00a0overstating his role in Operation Medusa during an April 18 address in New Delhi dominated\u00a0the\u00a0daily question period, with some MPs hollering “shame!” and “disgusting!”<\/p>\n The Conservatives said it is not an isolated incident, but\u00a0part of a pattern of misleading the public<\/p>\n Conservative defence critic James\u00a0Bezan\u00a0has also disputed claims by\u00a0Sajjan that the\u00a0Iraqis were accepting of Canada’s decision to withdraw\u00a0its CF-18 jet fighters from combat against ISIS. He said the minister also made misleading statements about the air force’s capability gap and who was responsible for cutting danger pay for soldiers in Kuwait.<\/p>\n Bezan said Sajjan has become a “laughingstock” and that his reputation has been damaged beyond repair.<\/p>\n “Canadians don’t believe him. The military doesn’t trust him. And I can tell you, our allies aren’t going to take him seriously,” he said in the House of Commons.<\/p>\n Former soldiers with direct knowledge of Sajjan’s\u00a0role in Afghanistan told CBC News that he\u00a0served as a liaison officer with local Afghan leadership, and provided critical intelligence and insight that helped shape the battle, but that he did not plan the September 2006 operation west of Kandahar City.<\/p>\n Sajjan served on one tour to\u00a0Bosnia and three deployments to Afghanistan as a reservist.<\/p>\n On the weekend, Sajjan\u00a0took to social media to state he had\u00a0made a “mistake” in how he described his role, retracted the statement and apologized.<\/p>\n “I am truly sorry,” he said in a\u00a0Facebook post Saturday. “While I am proud of the role I played during my deployments to Afghanistan, my comments were in no way intended to diminish the roles of my former superiors and fellow soldiers. To them I offer my sincere apologies.”<\/p>\n Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan apologizes, full media availability<\/strong>2:19<\/p>\n<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Harjit\u00a0Sajjan has his “full confidence” amid a growing controversy over the defence minister’s exaggerated claim he was the\u00a0“architect” of a major assault on the Taliban\u00a0in 2006. Interim Conservative Leader Rona\u00a0Ambrose accused Sajjan of “stolen valour” for taking credit for the actions of another, and called on Trudeau to fire him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-77403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Served as liaison officer<\/h2>\n