Last winter, while the Quebec National Assembly banned the kirpan, Mr. Vickers moved to ensure that the ceremonial dagger be allowed in the Commons despite a Bloc Québécois motion calling for it to be prohibited.

For that, the World Sikh Organization of Canada paid tribute to him at a dinner in Ottawa. And there, Mr. Vickers, who had served for 29 years as an RCMP officer, explained in a moving speech his view of the country and what led to his decision.

While it might not seem unusual for Canadian MPs to dine with an Indian human-rights lawyer, the World Sikh Organization’s annual parliamentary dinner this Wednesday (June 1) says much about what a remarkable country Canada is.

The World Sikh Organization has expressed disappointment over a unanimous vote in the National Assembly to bar the kirpan from the legislative buildings.

When the World Sikh Organization of Canada was invited to speak in Quebec about Muslim women’s right to wear the niqab last week, we didn’t expect to spark another national discussion on the sovereignist view of the province as a distinct society. That kirpans, the articles of faith worn by all initiated Sikhs, had become a flashpoint for Quebec nationalism surprised no one more than us.

Recent WikiLeaks documents quote a powerful Indian politician that Hindu militants posed a greater danger than Muslim terrorists. The speaker was Rahul Gandhi (no relation of the mahatma). A potential future prime minister, he belongs to the federal ruling Congress Party, whose president is his mother, Sonia Gandhi. She’s the one who called Modi “a merchant of death.”

A great editorial in the Ottawa Citizen

Leadership requires the willingness to take unpopular positions. Michael Ignatieff showed that willingness this week when he went to Quebec and defended Sikhs’ right to wear the kirpan, a ceremonial dagger, in the Quebec National Assembly and other legislative buildings in Canada.

You have to wonder what the powers that be in Quebec City were thinking when they invited a delegation of Sikhs to make a presentation to a National Assembly committee this week, only to have them turned away at the door because the invitees declined to surrender their kirpans, the ceremonial daggers devout Sikhs are obliged by their faith to wear on their persons at all times.

Just the other day security guards at the Quebec legislature denied entry to four Sikhs with kirpans on their sashes. Quebec is going all French about regulating niqabs and so on and fair play to them but the Parti Québécois wants to go whole hog and “regulate” kirpans. If that wasn’t stupid enough the Bloc Quebecois now want kirpans banned from the House of Commons in Ottawa.

The World Sikh Organization of Canada reached out to the Bloc Quebecois Thursday in an attempt to calm a brewing storm about the kirpan, the ceremonial dagger carried by religious Sikhs.