On December 8, members of the Toronto chapter of Pflag—a volunteer group dedicated to “creating a caring, just, and affirming world for LGBTQ+ people and those who love them”—received an unusual email. The organization said that while it rarely shares survey requests from third parties, it was making an exception for a “trusted partner”: Statistics Canada.
The federal statistical agency published “gender-identity” data for people 15 and older in 2022. But many Canadians may not know that it has also collected this information for children aged 0 to 14. Now, the agency wants input on how to present this data publicly. The email sent to Pflag solicited parental feedback on how to “produc[e] and releas[e] information on transgender and non-binary children and youth.”
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A ten-page “Consultation Guide” was attached to the email, titled “Transgender and Non-binary Children and Youth: Data Dissemination.” The Guide’s authors claim that releasing this data will “contribute to strengthening evidence-based decision making to inform programs and services for these populations.” That sounds reasonable enough until one grasps the implications: that infants and toddlers have a “gender identity,” that this identity can differ from their sex, and that governments must know this information so that they can design programs and services around these presumed identities. The Guide accepts these tenuous premises in its opening paragraphs, explaining that its goal is to publish the data in a way “that does not cause undue harm to gender diverse children and youth.”
In its Objective and Confidentiality section, the Guide purports to summarize relevant background from “National Statistical Organizations (NSOs), academic and other grey literature, and common public discourse.” But instead of accurately relaying known facts, it presents a heavily distorted account of child development aimed to help parents identify their young children’s supposed “gender identity.”
First, the authors claim that “children and youth are often assumed to be cisgender [identifying with their biological sex] . . . from birth until they ‘come out’ as a different gender on their own accord.” They cite a study that purportedly demonstrates that “children aged 18 to 24 months are developmentally capable of recognizing gender norms and expressing gendered behaviours in visible ways.” But the study and the broader developmental psychology literature do not say that toddlers “recogniz[e] gender norms.” What they actually show is that children begin developing the ability to distinguish males from females—based on perceptual cues like faces and voices—between one and two years of age. This has nothing to do with recognition of a subjective inner sense of self.
Later in that paragraph, the Guide claims that “Children may mimic gender norms and roles learned from people in their environment, assert their desire for certain clothing, hair styles or other accessories and choose to play with toys that match their gender identity.” Apparently, the authors believe that if toddlers play with a doll or a truck, they are expressing their “gender identity,” and that adults should interpret such behavior as a window into the child’s internal psychological state.
Things become even more speculative from there. The Guide’s authors claim that “transgender and non-binary children may recognize and express their gender to others from as early as 2 to 3 years old.” But the studies they’re gesturing at show nothing of the kind—in reality, they report the ages at which parents socially transitioned their children, not when children formed a stable internal sense of identity. A three-year-old boy who prefers his hair long is not announcing that he is a girl; rather, parents who “affirm” their boy as a girl for such reasons are revealing their ideology.
Next, the Guide turns to the concept of “gender.” The authors claim that it is “normal” for a child’s gender to change over time, and that “children do not experience undue harm from exploring their gender in ways that differ from their assumed gender or sex at birth.” But while most forms of imagination-based play are normal and harmless, like pretending to be a superhero or one’s favorite Disney character, in today’s clinical and educational environment, “gender exploration” is often paired with “social affirmation,” which in turn often begets puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
One of the Guide’s most remarkable sections concerns data collection. Statistics Canada admits that “gender identity” data for children under 12 comes mostly from proxy reporting—parents or household members declaring a child’s “gender identity” on the child’s behalf.
Rather than viewing this as a limitation on its data’s reliability, the Guide treats it as a fixable flaw in parental judgment. It suggests that proxy data may be distorted because “the gender of a child is often assumed based on sex at birth.” At the same time, it notes that some parents now label their infants as “non-binary” by default until the child says otherwise. Instead of concluding that gender identity is unmeasurable in very young children, the Guide suggests that providing parents with “gender diversity information . . . from birth or an early age” will produce more reliable data.
Throughout the document, the authors suggest that public resistance to or skepticism about concepts like “gender fluidity, cisnormativity . . . and transnormativity” is a result of misunderstanding, and that this ignorance is fueling legislation concerning pronoun usage, access to “gender-affirming health care,” and sports participation. The Guide also asks respondents whether they anticipate a “negative reaction from certain groups” if gender-identity data for young children are published, again implying that such a reaction would be rooted in prejudice.
What the Guide never addresses is its central conceptual problem: the idea of a “transgender” or “non-binary” child, which depends on the false belief that everyone has an innate, internal gender identity separate from their sex, and that this identity is discernible even in babies and toddlers. Yet no compelling evidence supports this claim. What activists interpret as signs of an internal gender identity—preferences, behaviors, personality traits—all reflect normal variations among boys and girls. Nevertheless, the Guide proceeds as though the innateness of transgenderism were a settled matter—as if labeling an infant “non-binary” were as scientifically valid as recording his or her birth weight.
When a national statistics agency adopts contested metaphysical beliefs as objective data points, it does more than mismeasure reality—it distorts people’s perception of reality. And these perceptions shape school policies, medical guidelines, and government programs.
Statistics Canada is not just proposing to publish data. It is proposing to institutionalize an ideology that pathologizes ordinary childhood behavior and funnels children toward social and medical transitions. The Consultation Guide reads less like a technical survey than an ideological document attempting to create the very phenomenon it claims only to want to measure.
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