‘Historic’ census data sheds light on the number of trans and non-binary people for the first time | CBC News


Statistics Canada, in its second release of 2021 census data, has provided a comprehensive count of how many cisgender, transgender and non-binary men and women live in Canada.

Of the more than 30.5 million Canadians over the age of 15 counted in the census, 100,815 of them identify as transgender or non-binary. That’s 0.33 percent of the total population, or about one in 300 people.

That number is further divided with 59,460 transgender people and 41,355 non-binary.

Generation Z Canadians, ages 17 to 24, were seven times more likely to identify as trans or non-binary than those in the older generation, ages 76 and older.

Statistics Canada says this new way of reporting information is important because Canadians are evolving in the way they identify themselves and the census needs to reflect that.


The male/female gender binary question in previous censuses was split in two. One question asked respondents to indicate the sex they were assigned at birth, which remained male and female. The next question asked about respondents’ gender identity, providing male and female as an option and allowing people to specify whether they identified as something else.

“The main reason for this is to reflect the growing social and legislative recognition of transgender and non-binary people in Canada. And it’s also a response to feedback we received,” said France-Pascale Ménard, a census data analyst.

Ménard called the question “historic” as Canada is the first country in the world to have a mandatory census question to collect and report the number of people who identify solely as trans and non-binary.

Although the 2021 census conducted in England, Wales and Northern Ireland was conducted slightly earlier than the Canadian census, the question was voluntary. Similarly, with the Australian census, the questions there were also voluntary and thus a representative estimate rather than a full count of people in the country.

This month, Scotland is asking a voluntary question about its first census about whether a person is transgender or has a trans background. New Zealand is preparing two questions for your census next year that will ask about sex and gender, just like in Canada.

Data now provides the opportunity for governments, businesses and other organizations to serve trans and non-binary communities in Canada.

Trans and non-binary people continue to ‘other’ each other, critics say

But some in the transgender community see it as just a first step.

“Frankly, they’re after the eight ball,” said Anna Murphy, a Calgary advocate for transgender people. “This is something that should have been done many years ago. Now they’re starting to do it. It’s great to see. But frankly, these are things that should have been done.”

Murphy says he wants to see more data-driven government and private sector action, such as providing better quality and affirming health care for trans people, addressing underemployment and unemployment and other inequalities faced by gender diverse people. .

As the numbers show, having just two options for gender or sex excludes more than 100,000 Canadians from a key census detail. Statistics Canada has tried to correct this by having three options for the gender question: “male”, “female” or “please specify this person’s gender”.

Respondents were able to fill in any words they used to describe their own gender, which Ménard said was to accommodate the many different ways of describing gender diversity.

This method was developed through consultation and focus groups with trans and non-binary people and then tested through a 2019 census test of 150,000 Canadian households, according to Ménard.

This word cloud provided by Statistics Canada shows some of the most common non-binary responses to the census gender question. (Statistics Canada)

But critics have said the census gender question continues for “others” those who do not identify as male or female by including only males and females without some of the other more common options.

“You still call it ‘another,'” Murphy said.

“If you really care… you would have a box that says ‘trans’ that a person could check. You would have a box that says ‘two spirits’ that a person could check. Because that shows that you or whoever did this form actually recognizes that instead of just leaving a blank space”.

Jack Saddleback, an indigenous educator and public speaker in Saskatoon, says that indigenous communities have always accepted gender diversity. (Omayra Isa/CBC)

With the question open, StatsCan groups the responses into categories. For example, someone who entered “gender fluid” as her gender identity would be grouped in the non-binary category.

The question also allowed for two spirits, an umbrella term for many pre-colonial indigenous genres, which Statistics Canada has published as part of the non-binary category.

Jack Saddleback is an educator and public speaker in Saskatoon, originally from the Samson Cree Nation in Mascwacis, Alta. He sees the choice to write one’s gender as a step towards breaking down gender binaries, which have been imposed on indigenous cultures.

“I grew up in this larger Canadian colonial environment, which, in essence, unfortunately does not do any and all citizens any favors in the educational system delivered on these lands… The gender hierarchy that is imposed on each of us one of us puts us in little boxes,” Saddleback told Edmonton AM.

Regional and urban-rural differences

Across the country, the census found a higher proportion of trans and non-binary people in major metropolitan cities, known as census metropolitan areas (CMAs), and small to medium-sized cities, known as census agglomerations (CAs).

One in six trans and non-binary people live in inner-city areas of large urban centers and more than half of all non-binary people in Canada live in the six largest CMAs.

Among the CMA/CAs, Victoria, Halifax, and Nelson, BC, had the highest proportion of non-binary people. Halifax, Victoria and Alma, Que., have the highest proportions of trans people.


Overall, Nova Scotia, Yukon, and British Columbia had the highest proportions of transgender and nonbinary people (0.48, 0.47, and 0.44 percent, respectively), while Quebec had the smallest proportion of transgender people (0.14 percent) and non-binary (0.09 percent). %).

Ménard says he did not know what the roots of the regional differences are.

“Over the next few months, with the publication of the other census variables, we will take a closer look and see if we can better understand these differences,” he said, “but we consulted with experts in Quebec and they confirmed this trend.”

To learn more about gender identity, listen to They & Us, an award-winning CBC podcast exploring first-person stories from transgender and non-binary Canadians, available now on CBC Listen, Apple Podcasts Y Spotify.



Reference-www.cbc.ca

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