When first approached to approve a pilot Taser program in B.C., Ujjal Dosanjh was assured the stun guns were safe, thoroughly researched and would be used “absolutely sparingly,” the former B.C. premier said yesterday.
“Those assurances turned out not to be true,” said Dosanjh, Liberal MP for Vancouver South and federal critic for public safety.
Dosanjh was B.C.’s attorney general from 1995 to 2000 and first approved the use of Tasers in the late 1990s.
Testifying yesterday at the Braidwood Inquiry into the use of Tasers by municipal police, Dosanjh said use of the weapon has increased “many fold” and is being used in situations it was never intended.
“It is (being) used on an 82-year-old man laying in bed with a small knife in their hand,” he said. “It’s being used on fare evaders at B.C. Transit. It’s absolutely unacceptable.”
