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Is it me or are we seeing alot of fake news? For example, here in Canada more specifically Toronto, it seems some of the news here is fabricated. There seems to be a lot of deep issues written in new articles that journalists seem to be very "passe" about.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-india-canada-international-student-recruitment/ In India and Canada’s international student recruiting machine, opportunity turns into grief and exploitation From rural Punjab to suburban Brampton, Ont., a booming industry brings in thousands of Indians each year – but while recruiters and schools profit, many students flounder due to lack of supports DAKSHANA BASCARAMURTY, NEHA BHATT AND UDAY RANA A giddy Manjinder Singh strides into the offices of Grey Matters, an education consultancy in Chandigarh in the Indian state of Punjab, with his mother at his side, several boxes of sweet milk cake in tow. Mr. Singh’s student visa to Canada has just arrived, and he’s here to show his gratitude. The 18-year-old presents a gift-wrapped sweet box to the consultancy’s founder, Sonia Dhawan, who urges him to offer it first to the idol of the elephant-faced Hindu god Ganesha, mounted next to the Canadian and American flags. The reigning motif here is the maple leaf – it’s pinned to the walls of the counselling cubicles, on colourful flyers in every corner and even on a little golden brooch on Ms. Dhawan’s blazer. After a little pooja ceremony celebrating the arrival of his visa, which will allow him to study at a private university in downtown Vancouver, Mr. Singh distributes sweets to everyone in the room, grinning from ear to ear. Grey Matters, which sees 7,000 to 8,000 students each month at its 56 locations in India, is one of many such centres in Chandigarh’s sprawling Sector-17 market, a hub of retail stores and education institutes that has become known as a one-stop shop for young Indians itching to begin their adult lives abroad. Businesses like this all over the country send tens of thousands of Indian students like Manjinder to Canada each year – 105,192 were enrolled in Canadian universities and colleges in the 2018-2019 school year, the most recent period for which data are available. They promise a new life, jobs, houses and prosperity and – ever since the federal government introduced a series of programs in 2009 that opened the gates more widely to Indian students – a chance at the ultimate prize: Canadian citizenship. But for many, the dream doesn’t mesh with the reality. A few hours’ drive west, in Punjab’s Moga district Ont., that’s so well known in India it’s referenced in Punjabi hip hop – pulled back on its aggressive growth strategy for international students in 2018 after the city officials and community advocates raised the alarm about the lack of social infrastructure to support these students. A local funeral home has called what it’s seen lately a crisis: It handles four to five international student deaths each month – almost all of them suspected suicides or overdoses. In a major study on international students conducted at a postsecondary institution in Western Canada, a faculty member said landlords provide international students with “basically a hole in the ground that students may be willing to take for any cost.”4 When Ms. Dhawan launched Grey Matters 25 years ago, Australia was where Indian students wanted to study. But over time the preference shifted to the U.S., then the U.K. Now “Canada is all the rage,” she says. She credits this largely to the Student Partners Program, which Stephen Harper’s Conservative government launched in 2009 to streamline the application process for Indian students, specifically, who wished to study at a few dozen participating Canadian colleges. In just a year, the government was already celebrating its success: The approval rate for applications from Indian students had doubled. And while the program later expanded to include Chinese international students as well, the overwhelming majority of Chinese students here are enrolled at Canadian universities (83 per cent). The vast majority of Indian students, meanwhile, are registered at colleges (73 per cent). Students and recruitment businesses interviewed by The Globe say this is because most Indian students want to come to Canada to live rather than learn, and registering in a college program offers a cheaper and faster path to settling here (after landing in Canada on a student visa, they can get a postgraduate work permit and start logging the employment hours necessary to apply for permanent residency and, down the road, Canadian citizenship). As the destinations have shifted for Indian students looking to study abroad, so too have the cities they’re departing from. Firmly rooted in the agricultural belt of North India, Patiala, a city in the southeast of Punjab, is surrounded by billowing fields of wheat, maize, paddy and sugarcane. It is also a growing industrial hub. But a drive through the city suggests the aspirations of its residents lie elsewhere. “Study in Canada” billboards sit atop buildings, “Settle Abroad” posters are plastered on long stretches of electrical poles and local papers are filled with ads for prep courses for IELTS, the English proficiency test students must score well in to gain acceptance into Canadian colleges and universities. It used to be that students came from the bigger cities in India, often with a degree under their belts and some measure of worldliness. Now, they are coming in increasing numbers from smaller municipalities and farming villages too, often departing right after finishing high school, say consultants in India and advocacy groups in Canada interviewed by The Globe. Seeing limited opportunities for their children in their own country, rural families in India – particularly Punjab – are pushing them to seek a better life overseas; in 2018, 150,000 students left the state to study abroad, according to government figures. Some students who come into Grey Matters are so inexperienced the company offers instructions on how to board a plane or use the washroom on a flight. From Patiala, the wide road narrows to a single, tarred lane flanked by paddy fields that leads into the village of Mandour, where Narinder Singh grew up. His family sent him to Canada in 2017, where he registered in a hotel management program at St. Clair College in Windsor, Ont. Like many international students enrolled at colleges across Ontario, he did distance education and lived in Brampton. The city is home to the largest Punjabi diaspora in Canada and offers a soft place to land: There’s easy access to gurdwaras, restaurants that serve familiar food and grocers that stock Maggi, India’s beloved instant noodles. And at this point, if a young person wants to make the journey from Punjab to Canada, chances are high they have a cousin or acquaintance from their hometown there already who can help navigate life in a new country. There are also plenty of postsecondary institutes in Brampton itself. Sheridan, Algoma University and Canadore College – all publicly funded – have campuses in Brampton. The city is also home to more than 60 private colleges, many tucked into strip malls and plazas. At Broadway Consultants, a study-abroad consultancy in Patiala, 80 per cent of students choose to go to Brampton because there are so many private colleges in the city, which are seen as more affordable and easier to gain admission to with a lower language proficiency score. “It’s not the degree they are after, but a route to a better life and money,” says Broadway’s executive director, Baljinder Singh. The day Narinder left his village for Canada, he wore a shiny black tuxedo and slicked his hair back. He was one of the first to make the journey, and in the subsequent years, many of his cousins and neighbours followed. In the house next door, Narinder’s cousin Charanveer is eager to join his cousins in Brampton. He’d been working at a factory in Patiala earning just $136 each month with no benefits. He quit and now spends four hours a day in English preparation classes while also pursuing an undergraduate degree at a local college, with the hope that it might help his admission chances. But he’s not as starry-eyed as many students are about life in Canada because Narinder has been straight with him about the challenges. “It’s not that life is easier in Canada – Narinder says he is struggling too,” he says. “Settling down is difficult in another country, plus you have to think about saving up and working on future plans. But what makes a difference is that he is earning good money, which he couldn’t have done here.” Charanveer Singh of Mandour village, left, quit a factory job to focus on his studies, and hopes to join his extended family in Brampton. Leaving is a risky option but 'there is nothing for him here,' says his mother, Jaspreet Kaur, right. At their home next door to Charanveer, Satnam Singh and Daljit Kaur show some family photos. Their son Narinder, Charanveer's cousin, left for Canada in 2017. Patiala, a city east of Mandour, is home to many companies preparing Indians for immigration. Mantajvir Singh’s expectations of life in Canada were coloured by the WhatsApp profile pictures of fellow villagers who had left to study abroad. Some had Niagara Falls as the backdrop, others posed in front of newly purchased cars or large houses. Once he left his village of Chak Sarai in Punjab, he imagined he would move into a palatial home and spend weekends exploring his new country’s natural beauty. When he first arrived to begin a program at Centennial College in Toronto, a school where about 40 per cent of the international student population is from India, he briefly lived with a family member in Brampton before he found a rental. All he could afford was $350 a month for a shared room in a rundown apartment that housed seven others. He found the experience dehumanizing: Insects infested the living space and the water would get cut off without notice. Complaints to the landlord about the state of disrepair were rarely addressed. Rentals like this, the listings for which explicitly target students, dominate the local online classifieds in the Canadian cities where Indians on study permits have settled. In Brampton, which has a massive shortage of purpose-built rentals, the surge in the student population has created a lucrative but dangerous underground economy. In 2019, Brampton logged almost 1,600 complaints about illegal secondary units, many of them in basements. The city’s fire inspectors have been called to overcrowded rooming houses where mattresses have been found on every possible surface, including the kitchen floor. It’s a perennial issue discussed at Brampton city council with no easy solution. To live on campus was unthinkable for many of the Indian international students the Globe and Mail spoke to – a luxury only domestic students could afford. In Brampton, Sheridan has limited on-campus housing that can cost more than twice as much as students pay for space in a rooming house. On its website, the college links to a portal that lists vetted rentals – the hope is that students will choose these safer options over the cheaper but more crowded and unsafe accommodation advertised in online classifieds or community bulletin boards. But with only a few dozens options listed in the database, it doesn’t come close to addressing the issue, which is why Sheridan, whose international student population swelled by 34 per cent from 2015 to 2017, pumped the brakes on growth in 2018, capping the number of international students they admit. “We have focused that decrease on our campus in Brampton precisely because the communities we serve and the partners we value raise concerns about social infrastructure,” says Janet Morrison, Sheridan College’s president. For Mantajvir Singh, paying fees at Centennial College and keeping up the appearance of success in Brampton carried a heavy cost to his mental health. Every semester, Mantajvir would scramble to pay his college fees by borrowing money everywhere he could: $3,000 from the loan his parents took out after putting up their farmland as collateral, $2,000 from a relative in Vancouver, $1,000 that he’d take out on a credit card. If there was more owed, sometimes he’d ask his parents for more. He felt he needed to maintain the illusion he was thriving, just like all those students whose WhatsApp avatars he’d seen before leaving India. He didn’t spend a dollar on anything new for himself for the first two years he was in Canada, but then, just before his first trip home, he bought a Reebok track suit and a new pair of Adidas sneakers. He knew he had to play the part. When he was in Canada, the loneliness was crushing. Sometimes all it took was seeing a parent cuddling their child on the bus or a family walking together in a mall, and Mr. Singh would feel depressed – the memories of being that close to family seemed so far away. “Sometimes I felt like I was physically living but psychologically dead,” he says. He went twice to see a counsellor whose services were available through Centennial College, but the counsellor was white and only spoke English. The college has a student support program through a private insurance company that provides students with mental health counselling in more than 100 languages, but it’s not available in person. “When you’re lonely, you don’t want to speak from the brain, you want to speak from the heart, right?” Mantajvir says. “If I’m talking in Punjabi to you, I’m going to be talking more from my heart.” Harjot Sarwara stands with his wife, Manpreet Kaur, and daughter, Mehreen Kaur, outside his friend's house in Brampton. When Harjot Sarwara walked into the Chandigarh offices of ESS Global, a recruiter looked at his résumé and pointed out that since he’d completed his education in India six years earlier, gaining admission could prove trickier – he wouldn’t qualify for the Student Partners Program that so many students entered on and he would have to pay more money upfront. The recruiter told him if he wanted to go to Canada, he could get him admission into a sales program at a college in B.C. It didn’t matter that Mr. Sarwara’s background was in mechanical engineering and that he’d worked as an AutoCAD drafter. ESS Global charged him $500 to get the offer of admission from the school and then told him he needed to pay another $25,000 for his first year there, as well as three months of living expenses. He researched and calculated that those costs should total about $17,000 and asked what the other charges were for. “This is the package – do you want to take it or leave it?” the recruiter asked him. Mr. Sarwara declined. Later, he spent $1,700 to have a lawyer help him gain admission to another school, but the application was rejected when he didn’t provide the correct paperwork. The extent of the recruitment machine was driven home even further when another agent – whom Mr. Sarwara understood to be a subcontractor working for a recruiter employed by CDI College, a private career college – took $1,700 from him to get him admitted to the career college’s campus in Montreal In an industry the size of India’s, with so many players, addressing exploitation in the recruitment process is difficult. There are roughly 5,000 to 6,000 IELTS centres in Punjab alone offering coaching for students who will take the standardized English test, according to The Tribune, an English newspaper based in Chandigarh. In 2018, Niagara College retested hundreds of international students who were suspected of providing fraudulent IELTS scores on their language admission tests, since so many were struggling in class due to poor English skills. In an e-mail, Julie Lafortune, a spokesperson for Immigration, Citizenship and Refugees Canada, said in 2019 it paid for an ad campaign in India designed to educate prospective students about fraudsters working as immigration agents or recruiters and discourage those who had been rejected from continuing to apply. Mr. Sarwara finally got admission to CDI College to study web design, and his family took a loan of $20,000 to pay for it. After two and a half years, he found himself routinely asking his parents to wire him more cash to keep up with his expenses. He learned quickly that the way a career college operates is quite different from the publicly funded postsecondary institutions. Many programs had classes on weekends only, which freed up students to work during the week. In his first few days in class, he was stunned to see that nearly every other student was also Indian. Most were teenagers and seemed woefully unprepared for the basics of the course. “You know what they used to say to me? ‘Brother, save my file. I don’t know how to save a file,’” he said. Last December, the Quebec government temporarily barred 10 private colleges from issuing a certificate required by international students to get a student visa to Canada while it investigated their admissions practices and operations. This caused chaos for thousands of students in India, whose applications and acceptances were in limbo for several months, even after the suspension was lifted. Gurpreet Malhotra, the executive director of Indus Community Services, says he’s come to see private colleges in Canada as being in the business of immigration, not education. “The colleges are getting easy money, and the students are getting an easy way to get to Canada.” In 2020, Khalsa Aid Canada, the domestic chapter of an international NGO, alongside One Voice Canada, an advocacy group for international students, conducted a survey of 303 international students (98 per cent of whom were from India). They found 30 per cent suffered from clinical or major depressive disorder, and 60 per cent “suffered from poor well-being.” The grim results of this have become starkly clear in the past four years to Kamal Bhardwaj, director of Lotus Funeral Home and Cremation Centre in west Toronto, a facility preferred by many South Asians for its culturally specific services. He said he handles four to five international student deaths a month, many of which he suspects are suicides or overdoses (deaths from unnatural causes go through the coroner’s office, he explained, and he’s not privy to those results). One of the recent cases he handled was that of Prabhjot Singh, an international student from Punjab who was living in Truro, N.S., when he was stabbed to death outside a friend’s home. The incident sent a chill through the Indian international student community across Canada, which raised nearly $100,000 to send Prabhjot’s body back to his family in India through Mr. Bhardwaj’s company. About a year before he stepped into the path of an oncoming train, Lovepreet Singh told his family he’d finished his education and found work, but the details of his life in Canada were always unclear. “He was clearly struggling financially … and kept asking us to send him money. I sent what I could. But if he had only talked to us, we would have figured a way out of this,” his father says. Lovepreet’s education put his family $50,000 in debt, most of which has now been paid off through community fundraising following his death. “I keep wondering how alone my bachcha [child] would have been. I keep thinking of all the things he must have suffered alone. I wish he had people with him to tell him he was going to be all right,” his father says. The news of Lovepreet Singh’s death received little mainstream media coverage, but it spread like wildfire in Brampton’s student community. One Voice Canada counted 10 publicly reported international student suicides in the past year, four of which were in Peel Region. A group of Punjabi community organizers hosted a kirtan – a Sikh prayer meet – both as a memorial for Lovepreet and as a forum for students to open up about their struggles, most of which seemed rooted in financial stress and instability. Nearly every current or former international student The Globe and Mail spoke to complained about the 20-hour-per-week limit on work hours imposed on student visa holders. But the federal government has this limit in place for a reason: Students are expected to actually be pursuing studies while here on a study permit. Some adhere to the restriction and fall deeper into debt trying to cover their tuition and living expenses; others keep their heads above water by taking on extra shifts illegally. The work is easy enough to find through temporary agencies, Mr. Sarwara explains, but the downside is they often take advantage of students and underpay them. During a tough three-month period in Montreal, an agency paid him only $9.50 an hour instead of $13.50, Quebec’s minimum wage. Pandemic-related job losses carried a sharper sting for international students, since they didn’t qualify for the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit that helped so many others who were laid off stay afloat. Sheridan College distributed more than $1-million in bursaries to students in the first year of the pandemic to help fill some of those gaps. Local non-profit Punjabi Community Health Services frequently fielded desperate calls from students fearing eviction and directed a large portion of their 2020 budget to providing them with grocery gift cards or cash so they could eat and pay rent. Some students who reached out had been kicked out of their homes, forced to sleep in their cars or on friends’ couches, says Manvir Bhangu, the manager of health programs with the non-profit. Usually, many of these Sikh students would be able to seek support at the local gurdwara, but pandemic restrictions made that impossible. Ms. Bhangu’s agency received reports that at one house in the L6P area, a woman who was running a short-term rental for newly arrived international students to quarantine in was threatening to withhold their passports (which she’d required them to turn over when they checked in) if they didn’t pay her. Once, in the middle of the night, Ms. Bhangu had to electronically transfer money to a landlord to keep them from kicking a student out on the street. She says her agency didn’t just want to distribute handouts, but to empower students by offering résumé-writing workshops and job interview training. The reception of this kind of assistance has been less enthusiastic, she says. “I’m finding that a lot of them are not willing to change their situations,” she says. “A part of me doesn’t want to believe it, but maybe they’re just like, ‘Okay, I can get free money. So why am I going to work?’ I’m sure a lot of them are traumatized by the work environments they’ve been in, so they’re like, ‘I don’t want to do this. I’m just waiting for this to be over and I can go back home.’” Community concerns can be constructive, but more often they are hostile. At a plaza across the street from Sheridan College’s Brampton campus, a popular hangout for international students, signs forbid loitering. In 2017, a brawl between two groups of international students fuelled animosity toward the population, who were labelled as violent troublemakers by local news outlets and on social media. Other residents have complained the students don’t assimilate well – that they wear chappals (casual slippers) out in public, that they only spend time with other international students, that they don’t speak enough English. Arshdeep Singh, who came to Brampton from Fatehgarh Sahib in Punjab in 2017 to study at Centennial College, has picked up on the immigration status hierarchy that operates in his city. “If you are a citizen, you are at the top,” says Mr. Singh, now a long-haul truck driver. “If you are a permanent resident, you are treated better than others. If you are here on a work permit, they know you are desperate. You won’t be treated as an equal. If you are a student, you are at the very bottom of the food chain.” Mr. Singh and others who spoke to The Globe say some students don’t feel comfortable turning to the older, more established Punjabi immigrants in the community for support when they’re struggling. Students are often mocked for living in basements, but then treated with suspicion if they start to live more comfortably. If they get a car, a necessity for many jobs in a city as sprawling as Brampton, they’re chastised for living beyond their means, Mr. Singh says. The support network for international students is largely made up of other international students navigating the same challenges. 'I’m not going to lie, I picked Canada because all these Punjabi singers kept singing about Canada as this great place,' Navneet Kaur says. Navneet Kaur, 26, has become a surrogate mother to her five roommates in Brampton, all of whom are current or former students living away from home for the first time. She can’t get through a conversation without shouting instructions to her younger housemates. “Turn off the stove!” she yells to one in Punjabi. “Don’t run down the stairs, you’ll hurt yourself!” she says to another. Ms. Kaur was already a fully qualified engineer before she enrolled at Canadore College in North Bay, Ont., and says every one of the 180 students in her graduating class at Amritsar College of Engineering now live in Canada. Her parents wanted her to stay in Amritsar and get married, but she wanted something more and chose a life in Canada, inspired largely by depictions of the country that had permeated local pop culture. “I’m not going to lie, I picked Canada because all these Punjabi singers kept singing about Canada as this great place,” she says. “Punjabi music today is more about Canada than it is about Punjab.” Life here has turned out to be different from what those songs promised. Ms. Kaur works at a Lululemon warehouse in Brampton. She likes the work she does, but more than half her monthly income is sent back to her parents. “Sometimes, it feels like I’m part of a machine,” she says. Sheridan College’s Janet Morrison wants students like Ms. Kaur to come here with clear eyes about life in Canada, not just the fantasies promoted in pop culture. On the ground in India, the college has been operating a pre-departure program to teach students what is expected of them, what life is really like and where they can go for support. There are mock lectures to attend, sessions on the cost of living and advice about their housing options. Sometimes, if a prospective student doesn’t seem like they’ll be a good fit at Sheridan or has aspirations that don’t align with the programs on offer, Sheridan staff will refer them to other institutions in Canada. But Ms. Morrison knows that work on the India side isn’t enough. This winter, Sheridan is convening a summit with municipal leaders in Peel Region, including public health, police and fire services, to look at how to tackle issues related to international students, with housing as one of the top priorities. Mr. Malhotra, of Indus Community Services, says if the federal government is bringing so many students here as part of a larger economic and immigration strategy, they have a responsibility to better support them. “The reason Canada set this up is so that we can grab an immigrant young. They’re going to have children, set up a house, all that kind of stuff and become part of the Canadian society,” he says. “If that’s the goal, you want them to have as positive an experience settling as possible.” Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story included quotes from a Brampton Councillor who has been sanctioned by city council. It has been updated to remove the references.

@proudkaur21

Man acquitted in terrorist bombing that killed 329 people aboard an Air India flight off Ireland in 1985 is shot dead in his car in Canada in 'targeted attack' Man acquitted in a terrorist bombing that killed 329 found shot dead in his car Ripudaman Singh Malik was found on Thursday in Surrey, British Columbia He was not guilty in March 2005 of two terror attacks that killed 331 people Canadian authorities said it appeared to have been a targeted shooting A bomb brought down an airliner heading to India off coast of Ireland in 1985 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11015899/Man-acquitted-Air-India-bombings-shot-death-Canada.html

'We must strive to do better': Prince Charles says there is a 'collective need' to 'come to terms with Canada's dark and difficult' past in first royal tour speech as he faces calls to apologise for the treatment of indigenous communities Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall arrived in Canada on Tuesday for their three-day tour Couple took part in a 'solemn moment of reflection and prayer' upon landing and were welcomed by Trudeau The royals face calls to apologise on behalf of the royal family for the treatment of indigenous communities Royal also expected to speak about the Queen's 'profound affection' for Canada https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10826023/Prince-Charles-Camilla-arrive-Canada-Platinum-Jubilee-Royal-Tour.html

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/3-punjabi-men-arrested-in-canada-for-sex-trafficking-302344 Three Punjabi men have been arrested from Brampton city in Canada for using an underage girl in sex trade. While Amritpal Singh, 23, Harkuwar Singh, 22, and Sukhmanpreet Singh, 23, have been arrested, the hunt is on for a fourth accused. The case came to light on August 21 when police got a call that a girl under 18 was being held against her will, assaulted and was being trafficked in sex trade. The victim was rescued and taken to a hospital with serious injuries. The police then raided a house in Brampton and arrested the three men. While Amritpal Singh and Harkuwar Singh have been charged with sex trafficking, advertising sexual services, and benefiting from sexual services, Sukhmanpreet Singh has been charged with forcible confinement and aggravated assault. Police say they are looking for the fourth suspect who is also a South Asian.

What a dumb <banned word filter activated>. At least you can say he isn't 'communal' -- after all, many truckers in Canada are Sikhs. https://globalnews.ca/video/rd/35ec0c5e-8dc0-11ec-9813-0242ac110006/?jwsource=cl He looks broken. He is a creature of Klaus Schwab and the WEF. Many such cases.

very concerning what is happening to our community here

I have noticed that many (maybe even a majority) of Canadian Sikhs try to speak the way American Blacks are stereotyped to speak. This is also true for many "famous" Canadian Sikhs (think of "superwoman" and other various youtube "stars") . Why do they do this? American Sikhs know how ridiculous and absurd it would look for them to go around talking in such a way. I don't understand why Canadians do this. Maybe because Canada doesn't have any real "hoods," they think attempting to sound like you are from the "hood" is cool, and they know nobody will call them out on it? Maybe Canadians are in general so used to not having their own identity and living vicariously through others that they think it's natural to shamelessly imitate other people? Maybe most Canadians are just corny?

As I'm banned, much of what I've said before, say now and will say in the future, gets lost or ignored in the guest Gupt section. But, those of you that have taken the time to read some of my earlier messages here will recall 2 things I've said which tie up nicely to the point of this thread. Firstly, you may recall how a Canadian Sikh made a thread a while ago on the main page in which he asked if the 'Sikhs converting to Muslim probem' really was as bad as the UK Sikhs on this forum make out. As I couldn't reply directly to that thread I wrote a reply on this Gupt section in which I articulated that the answer was 'no'. I stated that the UK muslim conversion problem was only about a tenth of the size of Canada and America's massive Christian conversion problem but the UK's problem was magnified because the UK Sikhs, unlike the Canadian and American Skhs, are notoriously pessimistic and negative, perenially seeing the glass as half empty and habitually seeing their problems as earth shatteringly big. Secondly, you may recall that I once wrote about a few Canadian Universities that actually teach 'How to convert Sikhs to Christianity' as a full-time B.A. Degree course. I had obtained the actual syllabus for each semester of the course and I went into great detail how the course covered such subjects as "gaining the trust of the Sikhs" before going for the kill (mentioning Jesus). I stated how the course gave its students detailed knowledge about first visiting Gurdwaras as a 'friend of the Sikhs'......asking questions about the Gurus and Sikhi in order to give the impression that you are interested in Sikhi....but to NEVER mention the word Jesus until you had built up that level of trust a few weeks / months later. And so this brings me to the point of this thread. There is a video doing the rounds of some black girls in Canada speaking pure Punjabi. The video is doing the rounds among the Sikhs because the Sikhs feel honoured and proud that these girls had learned our language so well. Everyone is posting comments stating what a wonderfull thing it was nd how these girls should be role models for our own Sikh children. Call it the typical Sikh gullibility, un-padhness or whatever but nearly all, in their excitement, have either not heard or chosen to not hear, the bit in the video in which the girls state their actual reason for learning Punjabi. The state they learned it because it was a tool to help "save the Sikhs" and bring them closer to the 'Messiah", i.e convert them to Christianity. This is all very very frightening stuff. Frightening not only at the extent the Christians will go to convert us but also in the way that we as a people are generally very very un-padh and gullible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS0FViVbViw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS0FViVbViw

The far-right white groups in Canada are $$$ by Indians so stir up 'Khalistan terrorists' and gaslight us...they've done a good job

Canada has now officially the largest Sikh community outside of India - 500,000. The UK is not far behind. The US Sikh community has grown to 250,000.

NDP for me

There r lots of good Sikhs in Canada. But can a true Khalsa take oath to show his true allegiance to the Queen?

https://www.saanichnews.com/news/photos-sikh-motorcycle-group-starts-cross-canada-charity-tour-in-victoria/ PHOTOS: Sikh motorcycle group starts cross-Canada charity tour in Victoria JAKE ROMPHF Jul. 17, 2021 5:00 p.m. LOCAL NEWS NEWS Picture 10 of 10 Previous The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) The Legendary Sikh Riders started their cross-Canada tour, to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in Victoria on July 17. (Jake Romphf/ News Staff) Next 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 A rumble rose from Dallas Road on Saturday as tens of the Sikh motorcyclists kick started their cross-Canada tour in support of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. “This is an exciting moment,” Malkiat Singh Hoonjan, the Legendary Sikh Riders’ road captain, told Black Press Media before they hit the road. “We’re here on the face of the Earth to help people, to help each other.” The riders took off from the Mile 0 sign before heading a few minutes down Dallas Road, where they wet their wheels with some water from the Salish Sea. They’ll be on the road the for about a week and a half before they dip their tires into the Atlantic Ocean, near the Confederation Bridge, and turn around. The Legendary Sikh Riders will be asking people to make donations to the Make-A-Wish Foundation as they roll across the nation. Each donation will support children from the province where the donation was made. “We wanted to something for the children,” the road captain said. “Some chidren are not granted the quality of life that we have, so we would at least like to leave something for the kids.” Singh Hoonjan was sporting a light-brown vest that was hand-stitched by an Indigenous woman. He pointed to two circles, one forming the Indigenous Medicine Wheel and another in the Sikh Khanda, within patches on the vest and said “we are all one, nature is all one, it doesn’t matter what colour you are, who you are, we’re all one.” The motorcyclists have done rides to show support for the Indigenous community after the discovery of unmarked graves at former residential school sites. The Legendary Sikh Riders are also be riding in memory of the children who attended the institutions. “We wanted to carry a piece of them with us,” Singh Hoonjan said.

ANOTHER mass grave of 182 children discovered at Catholic-run 'Indian' residential school in Canada as Pope Francis agrees to meet with survivors Latest discovery on Wednesday was made by an indigenous group using ground-penetrating radar at the former St. Eugene's Mission School in Cranbrook, B.C. School was run by the Catholic Church from 1912 until the early 1970s It follows two similar findings at other church-run schools, one of more than 600 unmarked graves in Saskatchewan and another of 215 bodies in BC Pope Francis invited native groups to meet him at Vatican, it emerged Tuesday Chiefs and Canadian government want a papal apology which has not yet come The native group which made the latest grim discovery, Lower Kootenay Band, said Wednesday that the atrocity was akin to the Nazis systematic killing of Jews Another 182 indigenous children's bodies have been discovered in a mass grave at a Catholic-run school in Canada amid calls for the Church to apologise for its role. The latest discovery on Wednesday was made by an indigenous group using ground-penetrating radar at the former St. Eugene's Mission School in Cranbrook, British Columbia, which was operated by the Church from 1912 until the early 1970s. It follows two similar findings at other church-run schools, one of more than 600 unmarked graves in Saskatchewan and another of 215 bodies in BC. Pope Francis has invited survivors of the residential schools to meet with him at the Vatican in December, it was announced on Tuesday. After graves were found last month, Francis expressed his pain and pressed religious and political authorities to shed light on 'this sad affair.' But he didn't offer the apology sought by First Nations and the Canadian government. The native group which made the latest grim discovery, Lower Kootenay Band, said Wednesday that the atrocity was akin to the Nazis systematic killing of Jews. Read full article: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9742099/Pope-meet-Canada-indigenous-amid-demands-apology.html

Muslim family in Canada killed in 'premeditated' truck attack Published https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57390398 7 hours ago Share tionLondon, Ontario police: "We believe the victims were targeted because of their Islamic faith" Four members of a Muslim family were killed in a "premeditated" vehicle attack on Sunday, Canadian police say. The attack took place in the city of London, Ontario province. A boy aged nine, the family's only survivor, is in hospital with serious injuries. A 20-year-old Canadian man has been charged with four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. The attack was the worst against Canadian Muslims since six people were killed in a Quebec City mosque in 2017. "It is believed that these victims were targeted because they were Muslim," Det Supt Paul Waight told a news conference on Monday. Police are weighing possible terrorism charges, he said, adding that it is believed to be a hate crime. Who are the victims? Two women - aged 74 and 44 - a 46-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl were all killed. They have not been named, in accordance with the wishes of the family. A nine-year-old boy was in hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, said police. Police named the alleged attacker as Nathanial Veltman, 20, of London, Ontario. He was arrested without incident at a shopping centre about 6km (4.8 miles) from the crime scene. It is not yet known if the suspect has ties to any hate groups, said Det Supt Waight. IMAGE COPYRIGHTREUTERS image captionA makeshift memorial for the victims was set up at the scene of the attack IMAGE COPYRIGHTREUTERS image captionMany local residents were in shock after the attack "There is no known previous connection between the suspect and the victims," Det Supt Waight said, adding that the suspect was wearing a vest that appeared to be "like body armour". Police said Mr Veltman had no previous convictions. Officials added that there was good weather and high visibility conditions when the black truck was seen mounting the kerb on Hyde Park Road at around 20:40 local time on Sunday. One witness told CTV News she had to shield her young daughter's eyes from the bodies. Another witness told CTV the scene was "just chaos". "There were people everywhere and running," said Paige Martin. "Citizens were trying to direct the emergency vehicles where to go. There was a lot of pointing and screaming and arm waving." A 2016 census found that London - a city about 200km (125 miles) south-west of Toronto - is growing increasingly diverse. One in five people was born outside of Canada, with Arabs being the area's largest minority group, and South Asians coming in a close second. 'Unspeakable hatred' Ontario Premier Doug Ford was among those who paid tribute to the victims, tweeting: "Hate and Islamophobia have NO place in Ontario." Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted that he was "horrified" by the news. "To the loved ones of those who were terrorised by yesterday's act of hatred, we are here for you," he wrote. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.View original tweet on Twitter The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.View original tweet on Twitter "This was an act of mass murder, perpetrated against Muslims, against Londoners, and rooted in unspeakable hatred," said London Mayor Ed Holder. In a statement, Mayor Holder said he was speaking "on behalf of all Londoners when I say our hearts are broken". "We grieve for the family, three generations of whom are now deceased." The mayor's statement added that he had ordered flags outside London City Hall to be lowered for three days of mourning. The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) said in a statement that the attacker should face terrorism charges. "A man allegedly got in his car, saw a Muslim family walking down the street, and made the decision that they do not deserve to live," said the organisation's CEO Mustafa Farooq. "He did not know them. This is a terrorist attack on Canadian soil, and should be treated as such," his statement continued. IMAGE COPYRIGHTREUTERS image captionPolice believe the victims were targeted because of their faith Nawaz Tahir, a London lawyer and representative of the Muslim community, said during the police news conference: "These were innocent human beings who were killed simply because they were Muslim." "We will stand strong against Islamophobia. We will stand strong against terror with faith, with love, and a quest for justice," he continued. "Hate will never overshadow the light of love." It is not the first time members of the Muslim community in Canada have come under attack. In January 2017, a Canadian man fatally shot six worshippers at the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre, and seriously injured five others. The perpetrator was sentenced to life in prison. Canada's deadliest vehicle-ramming attack happened in 2018, when a self-described "incel" (involuntary celibate) ploughed his van into a group of pedestrians in Toronto, killing 10 people. Related Topics

Waheguru!!! Bodies of 215 children are found in mass grave at Catholic Church-run 'Indian residential school' as ex-student recalls how classmates would vanish and PM Justin Trudeau brands discovery 'shameful' Remains of 215 children have been found at the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia in Canada The remains were found with the help of a ground penetrating radar specialist after long-held suspicions about the fate of missing students One survivor told how children would suddenly disappear from the school without explanation, and sexual and physical abuse was common Many of those killed are feared to have died of diseases including tuberculosis, with survivors recalling how they endured physical and sexual abuse Canada's residential school system forcibly separated more then 150,000 indigenous children from their families from 1863 to 1998 A six-year Truth and Reconciliation Commission into the now-defunct system found in 2015 that it constituted 'cultural genocide' The latest discovery is the first time a mass burial site has been found and is expected to set of a 'wave of litigation' Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has described the discovery as 'heartbreaking' An artist displayed 215 pairs of children's shoes on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery to create a space for 'grief, reflection' The remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, have been found buried at a former residential school for indigenous children in Canada. Those youngsters were students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia that closed in 1978, according to the Tk'emlúps te Secwepemc Nation, which said the remains were found with the help of a ground penetrating radar specialist. None of them have been identified, and it remains unclear how they died. 'This is a tragedy of unimaginable proportions,' British Columbia premier John Horgan said in a statement, adding he was 'horrified and heartbroken' that 215 bodies had been found at the site. 'It's a harsh reality and it's our truth, it's our history,' Tk'emlúps te Secwepemc Chief Rosanne Casimir told a media conference Friday. 'And it's something that we've always had to fight to prove. To me, it's always been a horrible, horrible history.' Casimir said they had begun searching for the remains of missing children at the school grounds in the early 2000s, as they had long suspected official explanations of runaway children were part of a cover-up by the state. Canada's residential school system, which forcibly separated indigenous children from their families, constituted 'cultural genocide,' a six-year investigation into the now-defunct system found in 2015. The system was created by Christian churches and the Canadian government in the 19th century in an attempt to 'assimilate' and convert indigenous youngsters into Canadian society. They were forcibly removed from their families to attend the schools. Many of the children found dead are feared to have suffered deadly diseases including tuberculosis, although survivors say physical and sexual abuse was rife. The National Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada documented horrific physical abuse, rape, malnutrition and other atrocities suffered by many of the 150,000 children who attended the schools, typically run by Christian churches on behalf of state governments from the 1840s to the 1990s. It found more than 4,100 children died while attending residential schools. The deaths of the 215 children buried in the grounds of what was once Canada's largest residential school are believed to not have been included in that figure and appear to have been undocumented until the discovery shared on Friday. Survivors who attended the school say had friends and classmates who disappeared suddenly, and were never spoken of again. A survivor of the Kamloops school, Chief Harvey McLeod of the Upper Nicola Band, said the gruesome discovery had brought up painful memories of his time there. McLeod was taken to the school in 1966 with seven of his siblings, and says he suffered physical and sexual abuse there. His parents had also attended the school, and said it must have been traumatizing for them dropping off their children knowing the misery that awaited them. 'I lost my heart, it was so much hurt and pain to finally hear, for the outside world, to finally hear what we assumed was happening there,' McLeod told CNN. The children whose remains were found were students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia (pictured) that closed in 1978 The remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were found at the site. Many area feared to have succumbed to diseases including TB, although abuse was rife at the school Chief Harvey McLeod, of the Upper Nicola Band, said children would go missing from the Kamloops residential school and never be heard from again Children would disappear suddenly from the residential facility, and no one would question where they had gone. 'It was assumed that they ran away and were never going to come back. We just never seen them again and nobody ever talked about them,' he told CTV. Chief McLeod said despite the pain and trauma that the discovery had resurfaced, he hoped it would allow he and other survivors to heal. 'I have forgiven, I have forgiven my parents, I have forgiven my abusers, I have broken the chain that held me back at that school, I don't want to live there anymore but at the same time make sure that the people who didn't come home are acknowledged and respected and brought home in a good way,' he told CNN. Another survivor Jeanette Jules said the news had 'triggered memories hurt, and pain'. Jules, who now works a a counsellor with Tk'emlups te Secwepemc Indian Band, said she was haunted by memories of the guards coming to the children's rooms at night. 'I would hear clunk, clunk...and it is one of the security guards...then the whimpers,...the whimpers because here is the guy who molests people,' she told CTV. The Canadian PM Trudeau wrote in a tweet that the news 'breaks my heart - it is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country's history.' The Kamloops Indian Residential School in 1937. The school was established in 1890 and operated until 1969, its roll peaking at 500 during the 1950s Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9630875/Remains-215-children-former-indigenous-school-site-Canada.html

Latest research as of 2019 and 2020 showed Sikhism is the fastest growing religion in Australia and new Zealand. A concentrated effort should be made to make these two countries a hub of Sikhi. Canada also has a growing Sikh population though not officially recognised it is growing fast too. Pakistan should be our kaums number one target for secret conversions it would be beautiful to see west punjab once the centre of Sikh power of maharajah ranjit singhs kingdom having a majority Sikh population. And besides the more pakistani's that are converted to Sikhi the more stable the future of Sikhs and other non-muslims like hindus and buddhists will be in neighbouring Afghanistan and kashmir. What we need is less langari's doing their largar parties and handing out langar gifts to non-believers and more parchar parties and with gurbani gifts for non-Sikhs.