The recent stabbing of a Brampton-based Sikh lawyer by a protestor wielding a kirpan has once again brought forth a debate on this cornerstone ceremonial object of the Sikh religion. It’s a conversation with deeply seeded legal roots in Canada. Here’s a look back at some key cases.
1985: The Manitoba Court of Appeal upholds a judge’s right to ban kirpans from a courtoom. Meanwhile, in Alberta, the Court of Queen’s Bench overruled a school policy banning kirpans, stating that students may wear them so long as the kirpan is blunt and tightly affixed.
1991: An Ontario Divisional Court decision uphholds students’ and teachers’ rights to wear kirpans at Peel Board of Education schools, in response to 1988 Human Rights Commission complaint filed by teacher Harbhajan Singh Pandori.
2001: Gurbaj Singh, a 12-year-old Sikh boy, accidentally drops his kirpan in the yard of his Montreal school, leading to a complaint from a parent, a school board ban and a protracted legal battle.
2006: The Supreme Court rules in favour of Singh. The unanimous decision states that, though the board’s “decision to prohibit the wearing of a kirpan was motivated by a pressing and substantial objective, namely to ensure a reasonable level of safety at the school, and although the decision had a rational connection with the objective, it has not been shown that such a prohibition minimally impairs [Singh’s] rights.”
2009: A Sikh teenager is acquitted of charges he brandished his kirpan during an argument with fellow students. “If the three boys had the same nationality, and the same faith,” said youth court judge Gilles Ouellet in his decision, “this case would not have ended up before the court.”
Photo by Jasleen Kaur