Roughly 1 in 300 Canadians identifies as transgender or nonbinary, according to the country’s 2021 census data released on Wednesday.
The dataset reported on over 30.5 million Canadian citizens aged 15 years old and up, according to a report.
Of that number, 100,815 reported that they identify as transgender or nonbinary, equating to roughly 0.33%, or 1 in every 300 Canadians.
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Approximately 59,460 people identify as transgender, and 41,355 people identify as nonbinary, according to the data.
The data represent a distinction that Statistics Canada implemented to differentiate the terms “gender” and “sex at birth” while performing the census, according to the report.
What has been deemed as restrictive language on the Canadian census previously led to the exclusion of more than 100,000 people, according to the report, and Statistics Canada made changes to correct that error.
“The main reason for that is to reflect growing social and legislative recognition of transgender and non-binary people in Canada. And it’s also a response to feedback that we received,” France-Pascale Menard, a data analyst on the census, said.
This level of inclusion when it comes to national data is merely a step in the right direction, according to LGBTQ advocates.
“Quite frankly, they’re behind the eight ball,” Anna Murphy, a Calgary transgender advocate, argued. “This is something that they should have done many years ago. They’re now just getting around to it. It’s great to see it. But quite frankly, it’s stuff that should have been done.”
Fae Johnstone, another Canadian transgender advocate, said the move represents a change in the narrative.
“It says something when our government is recognizing the existence of trans folks who have historically been kept out of these conversations and uncounted,” Johnstone said.
“But it also is useful to us to better understand how we can focus interventions and address health inequities experienced by trans folks across this country.”
Florence Ashley, who identifies as a “transfeminine bioethicist,” wants to see the Canadian government go further and change the census term “sex at birth” to “sex assigned at birth.”
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“When you describe it as ‘sex at birth,’ you’re suggesting that sex or gender is fundamentally something you read on the body, rather than something that is assigned based on the social meaning that’s attributed to those bodies,” Ashley argued.
