Should there be gender-neutral identification available on government-issued documents?

According to a new poll, Canadians are divided down the middle on this contemporary subject, with roughly half (49%) in favour of gender-neutral identification for those who want it, and the other half (51%) opposed.

That changes, however, if the government document in question is a birth certificate.

The Angus Reid poll on the issue shows that a majority of Canadians (58%) are against any plans to issue gender-neutral birth certificates upon request.

Ontario is already working on a gender-neutral option for birth certificates; just more than half of the Canadians polled (51%) said they had neither seen nor heard anything about this.

Nonetheless, the provincial government said in May that plans are underway to issue, to those who want them, birth certificates that do not show the sex of the person. (Several provinces including Ontario are already removing gender ID from health cards and give the options M, F or X on provincial driver’s licenses.)

A majority in the province (57%) is against such changes to the birth certificate, with 36% saying they are strongly opposed. Those polled in Quebec likewise worked out to be 57% opposed.

Moving west across the country, opposition increases.

The legislature in Alberta passed a bill late last year that will permit a non-binary option on birth certificates, but public opinion in that province runs at 62% opposed to such an idea.

The figure rises to 65% in Manitoba and to 75% opposed in Saskatchewan, with British Columbia sitting at 60% against gender-neutral birth certificates upon request.

Only in Atlantic Canada does the majority approve, with 55% of those polled supporting such a change in their provinces.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the statistics relate to age, gender and political beliefs; men over 55 are highly opposed (71%) to gender-neutral birth certificates (versus women in the same age group, who are 57% against).

Furthermore, those who voted Conservative in the 2015 federal election are 77% against their province issuing gender-neutral birth certificates. NDP voters are 53% opposed, while Liberal voters are 54% in favour of such document choices.

Interestingly, people who have followed recent media stories about this issue tend to support gender-neutral birth certificates (51%); people who haven’t read or heard anything about it tend to oppose (62%).

Read the full report here

Why is a birth certificate more contentious than other forms of ID? The Angus Reid poll speculates, “Opposition could be born out of status-quo bias – a preference for continuity and a belief that change is synonymous with loss. This may explain why Canadians are more supportive of gender-neutral identification in theory than they are of putting it into practice in their province. Or, it could be driven by uncertainty as to how the Ontario proposal would work – something the provincial government is still trying to figure out.”

lbraun@postmedia.com