World Sikh Organization issues election demands for preferential treatment in employment, immigration
The World Sikh Organization published a federal election strategy demanding that federal leaders give preferential treatment to Sikhs when it comes to workplace requirements and immigration.
The World Sikh Organization published a federal election strategy demanding that federal leaders give preferential treatment to Sikhs when it comes to workplace requirements and immigration.
The guide requests special treatment and religious exemptions for Sikh workers to be exempt from wearing respirators and hardhats in workplaces where such equipment is mandated for safety.
The WSO argues that current safety gear can conflict with religious attire of Sikh men like their turbans and beards, and wants federal backing for an innovation fund to create alternative protective equipment that aligns with Sikh beliefs.
Canada’s occupational health and safety regulations currently apply uniformly across industries, regardless of religious affiliation, treating everyone equally.
In addition, the WSO is calling for a simplified path to permanent residency for international students, many of whom come to Canada on temporary study permits with the intention to work and gain permanent residency.
The organization also demands mental health funding specifically allocated to the Sikh community, though Canada’s healthcare system generally prioritizes needs based on individual medical conditions rather than ethnicity or religion.
The list of demands comes as political parties seek support from various communities in the lead-up to the federal election. While community engagement and identity politics is a regular feature of Canadian politics, no major party has formally responded to the list.
Currently the Sikh community in Canada is the largest community of Sikhs anywhere in the world outside of India, with around 800,000 adherents in the country.
Prior to the current election, there were more Sikhs (15) in Canada’s federal house of commons than in India’s parliament (11).
The WSO claims that Sikhs are the fourth largest religious community in Canada, and are the fastest growing.
Canada is a nation that was predicated on all manner of carve outs and inequities exemptions, institutionalizing legal discrimination against groups of people and entire regions of this nation. We've reached the tipping point; any more of the specialized treatment for certain specific groups, such as that advocated for by the World Sikh Organization, will bring the destruction of the Canadian nation as we know it. These people want religious tolerance, let them earn it in their original homeland. You come to Canada, fine. Immigration helped build this nation. But you assimilate and become Canadian or stay where you were born. No more bending our laws, society, and culture to meet your specific religious needs. Safety rules are there for a reason and are supposed to be universal in their application. Your religious rules are the ones that need to bend and adapt or else you remove yourself from certain fields of employment, that's the individual choice every person gets to make in our free society. The very Christian ethic of religious tolerance is something that is the basis for our freedom of religion in our secular society but this does not extend to any religion trying to bend our secular laws, rules, and regulations to the specific needs or whimsical of any religious belief. All immigrants need to know that they will be required to follow our society's secular rules, laws, and regulations or they can simply stay where they are.
All this demand and similar ones from other religious groups emphasizes the desperate need to have the words ''religion'' and ''creed'' removed from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Creed is different from the other protected groups such as skin colour in that one is not born supporting a particular creed. It takes a mental process to decide to support one creed or another. It is changeable at any time and at any number of times. While not an author of the Charter, I surmise that it exists to stop our peaceful society from discrimination against Catholics, Protestant or Jews. It has done that and that is good. However, it was not meant to protect violent creeds such as Islam and self-serving groups such as the WSO.