"The government of Canada will not tolerate any separatist Sikh organisation that poses a threat to the sovereignty and integrity of India," Deepak Obhrai, Parliamentary Secretary to Canadian Minister for Foreign Affairs, told PTI.
Obhrai was commenting on recent concerns expressed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to his counterpart Prime Minister Stephen Harper over growing support by Canadian Sikhs for militants in Punjab.
Ujjal Dosanjh, a former Liberal cabinet minister and onetime British Columbia premier, has said Sikh extremism was on the rise in some parts of the country and nothing was being done about it.
That militancy is worse now, he said, than a generation ago when extremists blew up an Air India flight, killing 329 people, most of them Canadians.
Ironically, Dosanjh said separatist extremism is more entrenched in some Canadian Sikh communities than in Punjab, the Indian region where the Khalistan movement named after the theoretical Sikh country originated.
"It's getting worse," Globe and Mail quoted Dosanjh as saying. "The number of people who have continued to perpetuate that kind of hatred has become smaller, but more consistent and more long-lasting," he said.
Image: Deepak Obhrai