Canadian Teens Get Their Sexual Health Information at School, Says StatCan

Students arrive at a high school in Dartmouth, N.S., on Sept. 8, 2020. The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan

Canadian teens get most of their sexual health information from school, a new Statistics Canada report has found.

The report, entitled “Where do 15- to -17-year-olds in Canada get their sexual health information?” says 56 percent of adolescents identified school as the main source of information about sex. Most teens said they had more than one main source, mentioning parents or caregivers (51 percent), the Internet (46 percent), friends (36 percent), and health care professionals (21 percent).

Statistics Canada researchers also found that 15 percent of teens said they didn’t have an adult to talk to about sexual health issues, while 3 percent of teens had no source of information.

“The objective of this study was to update Canadian information about sources of sex education self-reported by adolescents and the related resource of having an adult to talk with about puberty and sexual health,” wrote report authors Michelle Rotermann and Alexander McKay.

“Where adolescents get their sexual health information is important and can influence their sexual behaviour.”

The report comes after months of protests across Canada over sexual orientation and gender identity resources in schools, known as SOGI, and materials used in the classroom called SOGI 123.

From Dec. 24 to 31, 2023, a group of protesters held a 24-hour-a-day protest in Abbotsford, B.C., against the information being taught to students.

“It just came to me that I need to because the children are being told to change their gender and all these pornographic books in their faces, and children being confused about whether they’re boys or girls,” organizer Kanwalijit Singh told The Epoch Times. “We have many cases from parents letting us know what’s going on in schools.”

On Sept. 20 and Oct. 21, 2023, Canada-wide protests were held in various cities to protest what is being taught in schools about gender and sexuality.

Dubbed the 1 Million March, thousands of protesters gathered to call for an end to SOGI in schools. The main website for the event lists its goals as eliminating SOGI in schools, preferred pronouns, and mixed-gender bathrooms.

Parental Rights Battle

In 2023, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs announced changes that his government would be making to Policy 713, the province’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity policy.

The updated policy required schools to seek parental consent before a student under the age of 16 would be permitted to change pronouns or names.

Saskatchewan introduced a policy similar to New Brunswick’s, provoking a legal challenge by UR Pride Centre for Sexuality and Gender Diversity. Court of King’s Bench Justice M.T. Megaw approved an injunction pausing the law from being enacted, but Premier Scott Moe used the Charter of Rights notwithstanding clause to override the challenge and push the legislation into law.

Tara MacIsaac, Andrew Chen, Noé Chartier, Matthew Horwood, and Neil Sharma contributed to this report.