Question:
I have a student looking for demographic information on transgender and intersex people in Canada.
Is there any survey/census/reliable estimate or other sources of information I can point them to?
There was a similar question asked here in 2015 and the answer was that there is no information collected by StatCan, but maybe something has changed since then.
Answer:
There is no data available on the Intersex population in Canada from Statistics Canada.
However, the Survey on Safety in Public and Private Spaces did publish an estimate of 0.24% for Transgender Population in Canada in December 2019.
Here is the link to their analytical document:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2019001/article/00017-eng.htm
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This isn’t the same concept that your researcher is looking for, but it may be helpful to bring up all the same. (i.e., it won’t stand in as a proxy…)
The latest CCHS has Variable SDC_035, where R’s have the opportunity to state whether they consider themselves to be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual.
From the questionnaire:
SDC_Q035 Do you consider yourself to be...?
INTERVIEWER: Read categories to respondent.
1 Heterosexual (sexual relations with people of the opposite sex)
2 Homosexual, that is lesbian or gay (sexual relations with people of your own sex)
3 Bisexual (sexual relations with people of both sexes)
DK, RF
I don’t think this would hit the mark for your researcher as the Q specifically talks about “sexual relations” as opposed to gender and sexual fluidities and identities. That said, I think this may be the one of the few times (or only time?) in recent memory that StatCan has posed a question on sex/gender and then released into a PUMF, perhaps partly because the concept can be difficult articulate into a categorical variable without misrepresenting R’s opinions on this very personal identity question..
