The vice-president of the World Sikh Organization of Canada, Mukhbir Singh, told Radio Canada there had never seen an incident caused by turbans in the other Canadian provinces, where they are permitted.

B.C.'s executive director of the World Sikh Organization (WSO), Sukhvinder Kaur Vinning, said that in Quebec "the Sikh boys have been sidelined, and they are struggling."

“We have made several phone calls that have never been returned and sent a registered letter that was not responded to,” said Balpreet Singh, president of the World Sikh Organization of Canada

The Sikh community says this has forced a difficult dilemma onto the families of 100 to 200 children: ditch a religious requirement, or quit playing organized soccer. The World Sikh Organization says those children were forced out of soccer a year ago.

La Fédération québécoise de soccer (FQS) a choisi de bannir le turban des terrains de soccer de la province pour des raisons de sécurité, mais elle ignore si ce type de couvre-chef est réellement dangereux.

The spokesman for the World Sikh Organization of Canada, Balpreet Singh, says soccer associations around the world accommodate players who wear turbans. He says the Quebec federation is going to a lot of trouble for nothing.

Montréal) L'Organisation mondiale des sikhs du Canada (OMSC) songe à poursuivre la Fédération québécoise de soccer (FQS), qui a reconduit samedi l'interdiction visant le port du turban sur les terrains de soccer de la province, une situation unique au Canada.

Balpreet Singh, a spokesman for the World Sikh Organization of Canada, said Quebec is the only province where Sikh soccer players have faced problems because they wear a turban.

The ruling affects between 100 to 200 young boys who live in LaSalle, Dollard, Pierrefonds and some off-island communities, said Mukhbir Singh, vice president of the World Sikh Organization of Canada.

Sikhs British Columbia and Ontario are the top two provinces, respectively, for the country’s approximately 455,000 Sikhs. Just over three-quarters of B.C.’s population, or almost 156,000, lived in Vancouver. But the population is growing elsewhere, says the Canadian chapter of the World Sikh Organization. The economic boom in Saskatchewan and Alberta has drawn Sikhs with the need to find a balance between a Sikh keeping his beard and turban and requirements to wear safety equipment such as gas masks. “I gauge where the growing pains are by the number of calls I get,” said Balpreet Singh Boparai, the organization’s legal counsel.