Premier Doug Ford has announced Ontario will become the fourth province in the country to allow Sikh motorcyclists to ride without helmets.

In a recent roundtable interview with the Sikh community in Brampton, ON, earlier this month, in a conversation that roved around cap and trade and the education curriculum, Ford was asked about exempting male Sikhs, who wear turbans for religious purposes, from helmets. “Make it easy, before Christmas,” he replied. “It’s going to be one of my agendas, I’ll move forward with it, I’m keeping my promise.

“Promises made, promises kept.”

Just in March, Alberta became the third province to exempt Sikh riders from helmets, joining British Columbia and Manitoba. Private member bills were introduced in Ontario by former Ontario NDP MPP Jagmeet Singh in 2013 and twice in 2016 for an exemption but were quashed by Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government.

In Ontario, the helmet law as it applies to Sikhs was first challenged in 2008, when the Ontario Human Rights Commission took up the cause of Baljinder Badesha, who was fighting a $110 ticket he received a few years prior for refusing to wear his motorcycle helmet.

Ontario Court Justice James Blacklock, however, ruled against Badesha and the OHRC, issuing a 35-page decision. In it, he writes an exemption would render the helmet law unwieldy since anyone violating it could simply claim they were devout.

With files from Surjit Singh Flora