16.5% Of Gay Canadian Couples Married

Some interesting stats are coming from Canada's 2006 census report, released today:

The 2006 Canadian family portrait shows that the number of same-sex couples surged by 32.6 per cent since 2001, five times the pace of opposite-sex couples.

Of Canada's 45,345 same-sex couples, 16.5 per cent were married, according to the first-ever census count of same-sex marriages, reflecting their legalization for all of Canada in mid-2005.

The shifting portrait of the Canadian family found there were 8,896,840 families in Canada on May 16, 2006, 6.3 per cent more than at the time of the previous 2001 census.

For the first time in census history, there were slightly more couples without children at home than with them, reflecting both the aging of the population and lower fertility rates among younger couples.

Also, for the first time in census history, more Canadian adults have never been married than are married, reflecting an ongoing long-term lifestyle change.

Canada's three largest cities were home to half of all same-sex couples, with 21.2 per cent in Toronto, 18.4 per cent in Montreal, and 10.3 per cent in Vancouver.

Same-sex couples accounted for 0.6 per cent of all couples in Canada, in line with the 0.6 per cent in Australia and 0.7 per cent in New Zealand.

Here, males accounted for 53.7 of same-sex couples and women 46.3 per cent, roughly the same as at the time of the previous census.

About nine per cent of same-sex couples had children under the age of 24 living at home, although that was much more common among lesbian couples, at 16.3 per cent than for gay male couples, at only 2.9 per cent.

Obviously there will always be issues in measuring the size of any gay community. Even though Canada is counting 32% more gay couples than five years ago, coupled gays comprising only 0.6% of the general population seems low. If we accept that gays comprise 3-5% of any population, the Canadian result seems to suggest a fairly low percentage of us that are coupled.