Lesson learned, get back to work

EDITORIAL: WHAT OTHERS THINK Sajjan controversy shows ministers need to learn to hold their tongues

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan has corrected his boast about his role in defeating the Taliban in Panjwai province 11 years ago. He no longer claims to be the architect of Operation Medusa but attributes that role to David Fraser, the Canadian major-general who was in charge of the multinational force carrying out the operation.

The opposition parties in Parliament, smelling blood, are now questioning Mr. Sajjan’s character and demanding his resignation.

The case does not call for dismissal or resignation. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau might, however, leave Mr. Sajjan twisting in the wind for a little while, as an example to others. The wages of boasting is mockery. The spectacle of the defence minister facing his critics in Parliament after he has already admitted his fault should help encourage other cabinet ministers to think twice about enhancing their accounts of past triumphs.

Whole shelves of the world’s libraries are filled with the recollections of Second World War veterans, each of whom played the crucial role in defeating Hitler. Allowance should be made for genuine heroes — and Mr. Sajjan was commended for his personal bravery in the operation — to shine a bright light on events whose importance others may not appreciate as fully.

A cabinet minister, however, is held to a higher standard than other war veterans and is fittingly subject to mockery when his war stories veer into boasting at the expense of his comrades-in-arms. The mockery is a sufficient penalty. The minister is chastened, the record is corrected, the penalty is paid.

The minister got in trouble on April 18 when he gave a speech in New Delhi, India, at a conference on conflict prevention and peacekeeping in a changing world. His speech, including the claim that he was the architect of Operation Medusa, was reported in Canada and elicited complaints from other Canadian veterans of the Afghan war. Someone distributed a video of the speech. Mr. Sajjan issued a statement on Friday saying many people had contributed to the success of Operation Medusa. He followed this with a Facebook post on Saturday retracting his description of his role and offering apologies to his colleagues and superiors.

Police officers and airline flight attendants are learning the hard way that anything you do in front of witnesses may be recorded and that electronic record may be widely circulated. They are having to learn the extra mental discipline of asking themselves: how will this look when it goes viral on social media?

We now have a defence minister who not only knows 21st-century warfare from direct personal experience but who also knows the perils of boasting about personal achievements where there were plenty of other witnesses to set the record straight.

This is not a minister the country should get rid of. This is a minister with enough hard-earned scars and bruises to serve the government and the country well.

Don’t fire him. Stand him up in Parliament in front of his accusers. Let him take the flak, explain himself, lick his political wounds and then return to work. Let the rest of the government watch his self-induced ordeal and learn from it. Let them learn to back down immediately when they are caught, because the gradual, reluctant retreat just makes matters worse.

Better still, let them learn to imagine the viral video of what they were about to say and hold their tongues.

An editorial from the Winnipeg Free Press (distributed by The Canadian Press)