Under current Toronto rules, staff at homeless shelters and other gathering spaces must wear an N95 respirator when exposed to people with Covid-19 or during suspected cases. As part of the policy, staff must be “clean shaven” to ensure masks fit the property. But for Sikh workers, whose facial hair is a key expression of their faith, the rules have put them in a seemingly impossible situation. “I feel very humiliated,” Birkawal Singh Anand told CBC News. “If you ask me to shave my beard, it’s like peeling off my skin.” Most of the security personnel affected by the policy are hired through city contracts with third-party companies. But Anand, who works for ASP Security, says that after they asked for accommodation, he and more than 100 other guards were only given the option of moving to lower-paid roles – or being fired. The World Sikh Organization (WSO) calls the current policy “completely absurd” – pointing out that most orders across the city have been rejected – and called on officials to quickly rectify the situation. “Sikh police officers and other frontline care workers have served throughout the pandemic without being required to compromise their faith,” WSO President Tejinder Singh Sidhu said in a statement. “There is no reason why Sikh security guards in the City of Toronto cannot be accommodated under the law.” GardaWorld, one of the city’s contracted companies, said in a statement that workers were “offered other and equivalent opportunities” until the rules were changed. Star Security and ASP Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The WSO says it contacted city officials in June after receiving a wave of complaints from employees. On Monday, Toronto’s mayor blamed third-party companies for failing to accommodate workers while implementing the city’s policy. “I have asked city staff to work with all contractors involved to resolve this issue immediately and to be absolutely clear that we respect people’s human rights, including religious freedom, and we expect all contractors to do the same and to accommodate employees properly. Toronto Mayor John Tory said in a statement. “No city policy allows contractors to ignore or dismiss the religious beliefs of their employees or not accommodate them.” He called on all companies to rehire laid-off workers. The city also said it would consider terminating the contracts of companies “found to be in violation of city policy or human rights law.”
