The Department of National Defence and its new minister, Jason Kenney, are facing harsh criticism after sharing photos of Canadian special forces members from the ramp ceremony in Erbil, Iraq, on Sunday honouring Sgt. Andrew Doiron.

Sgt. Doiron was the Canadian soldier killed by friendly fire from Kurdish peshmerga forces in Iraq on Friday. The details of the incident — the first Canadian casualty in the Canadian mission assisting the anti-Islamic State coalition in Iraq, or what the Harper government calls “Operation IMPACT” — are still in dispute. As of Monday evening, four investigations into the incident had been announced.

While Kenney shared the photos on his Facebook page and Twitter account, an entire photo gallery of the Erbil ceremony and a second one in Kuwait on Monday can be found on DND’s website.

NDP national defence critic Jack Harris said that people are upset about the images – and he’s surprised that the government shared them.

“They’ve always claimed that national security prevents them from talking about special forces,” said Harris.

“It’s contrary to their practice and it’s totally inconsistent as to what they’ve been doing with respect soldiers going to Ukraine,” Harris told iPolitics. “If the government’s concerns are valid, it’s potentially reckless.”

The fact that the minister and DND shared the images is particularly imprudent, said Harris, given the government expressed concern about the security of soldiers in the wake of two being targeted and killed in Canada on Oct. 20 and 22 in St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Ottawa.

This is the second controversy surrounding Kenney and photos in the past 24 hours. Sunday, in honour of International Women’s Day, Kenney tweeted out photos of Muslim women wearing black burqas chained together, apparently to represent abusive policies in some Muslim countries. As the Ottawa Citizen reported, the photos were actually of a ceremonial reenactment of the persecution of the prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, and his family.

Bruce Moncur, a veteran who fought in Afghanistan who is also seeking the federal NDP nomination in Windsor-Tecumseh, said the photos posted of the special forces soldiers compromised national security. “This is endangering the special forces personnel and their families,” said Moncur.

“Those are special forces personnel – they are not supposed to show their faces in any capacity whatsoever,” he added.

The photos come just days after DND reinforced its policy informing journalists to refrain from taking photos of Canadian Forces deploying for Egypt on March 6.

“For force protection reasons, there will be no interviews granted by deploying personnel, and no photos of faces or name tags of deploying personnel at this media event,” stated the release.

Of the photo gallery, a spokesperson for DND said, “it’s unusual but these are also unusual situations.”

“I can only assume from my experience deploying that the guys there to escort the casket were close friends and they were there on their own will and they were most likely warned that there would be pictures taken and they accepted it,” said Cpt. Jean-Francois Lambert.

Later in an email, Lambert said that ultimately, it is the Commander’s prerogative to determine and adopt the appropriate force protection measures for specific circumstances.

“Given the threat-level assessment, gravitas of the incident and the importance of adequately honouring our fallen, it was deemed appropriate to release the photos,” said Cpt. Lambert.

But at the technical briefing on Operation IMPACT – the Canadian Armed Forces’ support to the Middle East Stabilization Force – on October 17, Gen. Tom Lawson, Chief of Defence Staff, said that media were prevented from interviewing or taking photos of departing members to “minimize any risks at all associated with being posted into this deployment on this mission.”

“While ISIL represents a tremendous threat to people on the ground in Iraq and in Syria, they’ve also made it clear that they would aspire to present a threat to – to the people of the nations who are providing forces that will be part of the efforts against them,” said Lawson.

“…the typical sendoff that you would have seen in the past that would have been so open, we narrowed that down a little bit, just to make sure that our individuals on their way aren’t identifiable,” he continued.

The government refused to allow interviews or photo opportunities with individuals who are going to Ukraine, or to Iraq, said Harris.

The special forces have to have anonymity to do their jobs properly, explained Moncur, it is through their ability to conceal their identities that they don’t have to worry about the repercussions for the missions that they have to undertake.

“There are less than 100 special forces operators in Iraq, it would be easier to identify and target them because of how few there are, CSOR operators are considered a special forces regiment.”

Moncur said it’s an example of “ineptitude at the highest level,” and added, “this is why I could no longer be a soldier.”