Next year’s census to include sexual orientation question: StatCan

An employee makes his way to work at Statistics Canada, in Ottawa in a July 21, 2010, file photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Next year’s national census will include a new question asking respondents about their sexual orientation, Statistics Canada (StatCan) has confirmed to CTV News.

In an emailed statement Wednesday, the agency said it has studied sexuality through “a variety of health and social surveys” for more than two decades, but that the 2026 census will allow it to gather demographic data on LGBTQ2S+ Canadians with greater detail than ever before.

In a report published last year, the agency noted that in consultations with stakeholder groups, the lack of detailed statistics on gender and sexuality “was one of the most frequently reported perceived data gaps in the census content.”

Existing surveys conducted by federal and provincial governments, non-governmental organizations and academia, the stakeholders said, weren’t sufficiently robust for detailed research.

StatCan says sexual orientation data will only be collected from census respondents over the age of 15.