OTTAWA - Same-sex unions are growing at five times the rate of opposite-sex ones that also reveal, for the first time, the number of homosexual marriages in Canada.
Some 45,300 couples, both common law and married, reported as same-sex in the 2006 census, up from 34,200. Those numbers represent a 33 per cent surge since 2001, while heterosexual couples grew by just six per cent in the same time period.
The historic Statistics Canada query on same-sex marriage, coming in the wake of Parliament legalizing such unions in 2005, revealed 7,465 homosexual marriages.
That's considerably lower than numbers reported by the now-defunct advocacy group Canadians For Equal Marriage. The group, based on its own research of municipal records, reported last November that 12,438 marriage licences had been granted to same-sex couples since provincial courts began recognizing such unions in 2003.
The census relegated same-sex marriages to a write-in category under the questionnaire's 'other' box -- a move that raised the ire of Egale Canada. The national advocacy group responded by urging its membership to list their relationships as husband and wife.
"One box for everybody,'' is how executive director Helen Kennedy described the group's position.
"People are people and people just want the same things out of life. Your sexual orientation should not matter.''
Anne Milan, a senior analyst at Statistics Canada, stands by the accuracy of the census data but concedes the limitations of relying on the answers people provide.
"It's the first time that we've asked same sex marriage so it's really a benchmark number,'' said Milan, who added it's "difficult to say'' what effect Egale's dissent had on the numbers.
"Future census releases will allow us to compare the count and see what's happening.''
The fact that the question was being asked at all shows that "people are getting on with their lives, which was fundamentally what the whole debate was about,'' said Michael Leshner, a lawyer and one of Canada's first legally married gay men.
"It's really a debate that hopefully has run its course... We're just part of the boring middle class now,'' Leshner said.
According to the census, same-sex couples accounted for 0.6 per cent of all couples in Canada. That falls in line with numbers reported in the United States, New Zealand and Australia. More than half, or 54 per cent, of same-sex married Canadian spouses were men.
Some nine per cent of same-sex couples had children, more commonly in female unions (16 per cent) than male ones (three per cent). Children were present more in same-sex married couples (16 per cent) than common-law ones (eight per cent).
Clarence Lochhead of the Vanier Institute for the Family says the homosexual community's successful fight for marriage reflects the desire to be accepted in the larger community.
"To the extent that you can think of the homosexual community feeling that they're marginalized populations, I don't think it's all that surprising that they would want access to those forms of unions that are recognized in a much wider social community sense,'' he said.
Ontario became the first province to legally recognize same-sex marriage following a 2003 decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal. Similar decisions followed in British Columbia, Quebec, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon, and New Brunswick.
On July 20, 2005, Canada became the third country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage, after the Netherlands and Belgium. Spain and South Africa have since legalized homosexual marriage as well.
"As my spouse Mike Starkel always says, we won. There's nothing they can do, we won,'' said Leshner.
