Canada has not banned RSS – viral claim is false

Canada has not banned RSS. The viral video shows the CEO of the National Council for Canadian Muslims making some demands. He has no link to the Canadian government.

Diplomatic relations between India and Canada have been affected by the recent assassination of a Sikh leader in Canada. Canada has filed a charge sheet against India, alleging that India killed a wanted terrorist. Both countries then sacked top foreign ministry officials. In this scenario, that some people are spreading a video that RSS organization has been banned in Canada.

A video of a person sharing the demand to ban RSS with the media is going viral. The words written on the viral video is Canada bans RSS with immediate effect and also remove it agents from Canada and he says, "Together with the WSO, we today demand the immediate ban of the RSS organization and the expulsion of its activists from Canada subject to criminal prosecution."The video is being circulated with the caption, “Canada bans Rss in CANADA and removed all ties with INDIA. #viral video #indvscanada #khalistan #rss”

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Fact check

A reverse image search on the keyframes of the video led us to a longer version of a video uploaded on a YouTube channel named NCCMTV on 20 September. It reads, “NCCM CEO Stephen Brown Calls for Action in Response to Alleged Assassination of Sikh Man in Canada”. He made several demands in his speech. One of them is to ban the RSS in the country.

In further search we found an old tweet from INC (Immigration News Canada) which shows Stephen Brown addressing the media as well making the same claims.

🇨🇦 Stephen Brown, CEO of the National Council for Canadian Muslims and Balpreet Singh, legal counsel for the World Sikh Organization of Canada calls on the Canadian Government to do 4 more things

1. Immediate recall of Canada's Ambassador
2. Start the process to expel India’s… pic.twitter.com/N7x4gff0Xo

— INC - Immigration News Canada 🇨🇦 🍁 (@CanadaImmigra20) September 20, 2023

Keeping this in mind, we searched with some relevant keywords and discovered that NCCM stands for National Council for Canadian Muslims. We checked the official website of the National Council of Canadian Muslims and found that it is “an independent, independent and non-profit organization born right out of Canada’s Muslim community”. The organization’s website does not indicate that it has any affiliation with the Canadian government. Therefore, the underlying claim that NCCM is affiliated with the Government of Canada is not true. Stephen Brown is not a government official. His comments cannot be comments or directives of the Government of Canada.

Next, we did a keyword search on Google with some relevant words to see if RSS is indeed banned in Canada. We could not find any news from any Canadian media or any such announcement on any official website. We also checked the website of Global Affairs, Canada ( Global Affairs, Canada) , the Canadian government department that manages Canada's diplomatic relations . There was no mention of the ban on the RSS in Canada. There was no information that the RSS was banned in Canada. We did not receive any other such news.

We also found a report by Al Jazeera published on 19 September, 2023, titled 'Sikh, Muslim leaders call for action as Canada probes Sikh leader’s killing'. The feature image of this report also showed Stephen Brown in the background.

It is clear that the viral video shows the CEO of the National Council of Canadian Muslims making several demands. But they have nothing to do with the Canadian government. The claim that the Canadian government has banned the RSS is actually misleading. The Canadian government has not banned the RSS.

Conclusion

Fact crescendo found that the claim made along the video is False. Canada has not banned RSS. The viral video shows the CEO of the National Council for Canadian Muslims making some demands. He has no connection to the Canadian government.