This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
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Canada’s Defence Minister, Harjit Sajjan, mentioned in a statement the day after meeting his counterpart in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration that Canada will never be a “party” to torture. Sajjan refrained from linking his comment to the meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary, James Mattis, and whether he made any assurance about U.S. would not employing torture under Trump either. A former military officer who served in Afghanistan, Sajjan, accepted that the two only discussed “ethics in soldiering” when they spoke at the Pentagon outside Washington on Monday.
During an interview on Tuesday, Sajjan explained that “when it comes to our military and Canadian values, we follow international law and Canadian law. Canada will never use torture or be party to that.” He explained that “this is something that not just within our military but many militaries also understand. I’ve worked with the U.S. military, and they too have the same structure and values as us.” According to Sajjan, “it goes without saying that we will never be a party to it. If we are a witness to it, we have a responsibility to report it, to investigate it.”
Since his election, Trump has vowed to defer from Mattis’s anti-torture views. Sajjan did not explain what his commitment to never be a “party” to torture might mean in practice but the head of the watchdog body overseeing Canada’s intelligence service, Michael Doucet, already indicated earlier that Canada may be forced to reconsider how it shares intelligence with the U.S.
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