Toronto Star: Ottawa cancels security policy on headgear

By: Nicholas Keung Immigration reporter, Published on Tue Jun 16 2015

Ottawa has abruptly reversed a new airport screening policy, decried by Sikhs as discriminatory, that required secondary inspection of religious headgear.

Ottawa has abruptly reversed a new airport screening policy, decried by Sikhs as discriminatory, that required secondary inspection of religious headgear.
Transportation Minister Lisa Raitt's office told the CBC late Tuesday that the new screening protocol, quietly implemented on April 15, had been made at the departmental level and said the procedure would be cancelled immediately for air travel inside Canada.
The reversal came on the heel of a news release put out by the World Sikh Organization the same day condemning the policy. The advocacy group had been trying to meet with Raitt, unsuccessfully, for the past month.
The WSO has received dozens of complaints from Sikhs who have been subjected to “pat-downs” of their turbans followed by checks for traces of explosives on their hands prior to boarding a flight, according to WSO lawyer Balpreet Singh Boparai.
“It doesn’t matter whether the metal detector (sets off an alarm) or not, he must go through a secondary screening,” Boparai said. “Individuals wearing non-religious headgear have the option to avoid secondary screening by removing their headgear. Sikhs who wear their religiously required turbans don’t have that choice.”
According to the Canadian Air Transport Security Agency’s recently updated protocol, religious and non-religious headgear were to be treated the same way. All travellers with headgear must walk through a metal detector, be subject to the pat-down, and undergo the hand explosive trace detection, whether an alarm is activated or not.
Similar detection, however, is not mandatory for other items a traveller might be wearing, such as shoes, sweaters or various assistive medical devices, said Boparai.
Even turban-wearing travellers who have NEXUS cards — U.S. and Canadian passengers who have been pre-screened for expedited border-crossing, are not exempt.
“I believe I’m being racially profiled and targeted as a security threat in Canada because of my faith and my turban,” said Raj Singh Hundal, who travels frequently for business between Canada and the United States.
“I am being considered a security threat every time I travel for work, even (though) I’m a NEXUS cardholder. CATSA’s policy goes above and beyond what the Transportation Security Administration does in the U.S., and I believe it’s targeting religious minorities such as turbaned Sikhs.”
Boparai said his group met with CATSA officials two weeks ago and was told the agency is simply the enforcer of the policy made by Transport Canada, which did not consult or advise faith groups of the changes.
“We’ve been trying to meet with Transportation Minister Lisa Raitt. She has yet to return to our messages and the letter we sent to her office on May 12,” Boparai.