Although same-sex sexual activity was illegal in Canada up to 1969, gay and lesbian themes appear in Canadian literature throughout the 20th century. Canada is now regarded as one of the most advanced countries in legal recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) rights.

Canada is a relatively gay-friendly country, with its largest cities featuring their own gay areas and communities, such as Toronto's Church and Wellesley neighbourhood, Montreal's Gay Village commercial district, Vancouver's Davie Village, and Ottawa's Bank Street Gay Village. Social surveys show a general tolerance of homosexuality. Every summer, Canada's LGBTQ community celebrates pride in all major cities, with many political figures from the federal, provincial, and municipal governments. There are a number of LGBTQ-targeted media outlets. Attitudes to LGBTQ rights are under debate within and between different Christian churches.

History

Same-sex sexual activity was decriminalised in Canada in 1969. Subsequently, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was outlawed in different parts of the country, and during the late 1990s, this was extended to the whole of Canada in a series of legal judgments. Same-sex marriage was recognised in 2005. Gender identity and gender expression were brought under the Canadian Human Rights Act in 2017.

Rights

Since the Supreme Court of Canada's 1995 decision in Egan v Canada, sexual orientation has been considered a prohibited basis of discrimination under Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.Egan v. Canada, 2 S.C.R. 513 at 528. Some provinces enacted protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation prior to the Egan decision, with the first being Quebec's amendments to its Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms in 1977. On June 20, 1996, the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA, ) was amended to include sexual orientation as a protected ground. The CHRA guarantees the right to equality, equal opportunity, fair treatment, and an environment free from discrimination in employment and the provision of goods, services, facilities, or accommodation within federal jurisdiction.

Society Demographics While LGBTQ people live in both large and small communities throughout Canada, the largest and most prominent LGBTQ communities are located in major metropolitan cities, such as Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Ottawa. LGBTQ-oriented neighborhoods, or gay villages, such as Toronto's Church and Wellesley, Vancouver's Davie Village, and Montreal's Village gai have emerged as hubs of LGBTQ culture and tourism.

As the Census of Canada does not ask respondents to identify their sexual orientation, there is no exact overall count of how many Canadians identify as LGBT. A separate data program, the Canadian Community Health Survey, showed in 2015 that 1.7 percent of respondents identified as gay or lesbian, and 1.3 percent identified as bisexual. However, the Health Survey is not the same thing as the census, and it is not a universal survey of all Canadians but only a self-selected voluntary survey filled out by active users of specific health services."Canadian Community Health Survey - Annual Component (CCHS)". Statistics Canada. Because same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada since the passage of the Civil Marriage Act in 2005, census figures are published for same-sex couples."Same-sex couples are flocking to the altar, new census data reveals". National Post, September 19, 2012. The Canada 2006 Census recorded approximately 7,500 same-sex marriages nationwide, while the Canada 2011 Census listed 21,000. However, the 2011 data only included couples living in major cities; some additional data on same-sex couples in smaller communities were withheld from publication after Statistics Canada determined that due to data tabulation errors, as many as 4,500 pairs of platonic roommates may have been incorrectly counted as additional same-sex couples."Census may have counted roommates as married gay couples". CBC News, September 19, 2012. This error primarily seemed to affect smaller natural resource communities, such as development sites in the Alberta oil sands, where some people reported themselves as both married and living with a person of the same sex, but may in fact have been migrant workers, who weren't married to the same person with whom they were sharing accommodation on the census date.

Festivities Pride parades have been held in various cities throughout Canada since the events of Pride Week 1973 and have also become larger in attendance, as legal and cultural attitudes towards LGBTQ citizens in Canada are relaxed. The largest current pride event, Pride Week in Toronto, was launched in 1981 following that year's Operation Soap by Toronto Metropolitan Police; the bathhouse raid and reaction by LGBTQ people is considered the Canadian equivalent of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City. Edmonton Pride also evolved from the protests against a 1981 bathhouse raid in Edmonton, Alberta, although that event did not add a parade until the early 1990s.. Vue Weekly, June 10, 2009. Many other Canadian cities, both large and small, have since launched annual pride events, with the largest and most prominent festivities taking place in Toronto, Calgary (Calgary Pride), Ottawa (Capital Pride), Montreal (Fierté Montréal), Halifax (Halifax Pride), and Vancouver (Vancouver Pride).

Toronto acted as host city for the international WorldPride in 2014."World Pride in Toronto: One-year countdown begins". Toronto Star, July 3, 2013.

As of 2017, at least one annual pride event takes place in every Canadian province and territory. In recent years, particularly in the 2010s, successful pride events have been launched in many Canadian cities much smaller than the traditional gay meccas."Evolution of Pride celebrations in Canada". Xtra!, June 11, 2013. In addition to the events noted above, festivals are currently held in Cranbrook, Tenzin Norkhel, Kamloops, Kelowna, Nanaimo, New Westminster, Prince George, Victoria and Whistler in British Columbia; Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, Jasper, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and Red Deer in Alberta; Moose Jaw, Prince Albert, Regina (Queen City Pride), and Saskatoon (Saskatoon Pride) in Saskatchewan; Brandon, Flin Flon, Portage la Prairie, Steinbach, Thompson"Thompson will become third Manitoba community to celebrate sexual diversity". Thompson Citizen, June 4, 2014. and Winnipeg (Pride Winnipeg) in Manitoba; Belleville, Brockville, Cornwall, Durham Region, Elliot Lake, Greater Sudbury (Sudbury Pride), Hamilton (Pride Hamilton), Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge (Tri-Pride), Guelph (Guelph Pride), Halton Region, Kenora, Kingston, London, Muskoka District, Niagara Region, North Bay, Peel Region, Peterborough, Richmond Hill, Sault Ste. Marie,"Sault Pridefest gets local support" . Sault Star, August 19, 2014. Simcoe County (Simcoe Pride), Thunder Bay (Thunder Pride), Timmins"Pride festivals catching on in northern Ontario". CBC Sudbury, August 20, 2014. and Windsor (Windsor Pride) in Ontario; Quebec City, Rimouski"La Fierté s’enracine dans les régions de Sherbrooke et Rimouski" . Fugues, September 26, 2013. and Sherbrooke in Quebec; Charlotte County, Fredericton, Miramichi, Moncton and Saint John in New Brunswick; Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island; Antigonish, Cumberland County, Pictou County, Truro, Sydney and Yarmouth in Nova Scotia; Corner Brook and St. John's in Newfoundland and Labrador; Whitehorse in Yukon; Norman Wells and Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories and Iqaluit in Nunavut.

In some smaller cities, pride events do not feature the parade that is a traditional part of larger pride festivals; Waterloo Region's tri-Pride, for example, currently centres around an afternoon music festival in a city park. Most pride events are held in the summer, although the cities of Guelph, Ottawa and Whistler also have "Winter Pride" festivals based on programs of winter recreational activities such as skating, skiing and snowboarding.

Many of the organizing committees are members of Fierté Canada Pride, a national organization that fosters collaboration between and helps to promote pride events.

Several major cities also host annual LGBTQ film festivals, including the Inside Out Film and Video Festival in both Toronto and Ottawa, Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival in Calgary, Reel Pride in Winnipeg, Image+Nation in Montreal, the Queer North Film Festival in Sudbury, the Reelout Queer Film Festival in Kingston, Queer City Cinema in Regina and the Vancouver Queer Film Festival in Vancouver.

Indigenous Various Canadian Indigenous Nations have had terms to describe sexual and gender variance, such as the Siksika(Blackfoot) term aakíí’skassi which described men who performed work typically associated with women. Within indigenous communities these differences were seen as occupying a unique third gender role, and were not seen as a difference in sexuality. Today these people are often identified as Two-Spirit, a term put forth by Indigenous queer activist Albert McLeod, to broadly represent these variances within the many North American First Nations. Having a unique term was important as Indigenous queer identity and concerns were distinct from those of non-indigenous LGBTQ+ people.

Religion While the earliest advocacy for LGBTQ rights initially came from or was adopted by members of the left-wing milieu of Canadian politics, LGBTQ-affirmative religious organizations such as the Metropolitan Community Church played an early role in the advocacy for civil rights. MCC pastor Brent Hawkes, rector of the MCC of Toronto, became one of the earliest openly gay advocates for LGBTQ civil rights in the country, and performed the first same-sex marriage ceremony in the country, eventually participating in the successful legal struggle to have it recognized by Ontario.

The issue of LGBTQ-affirmative policies has also become a major topic of theological and political discussion in the United Church of Canada, which now ordains LGBT clergy and performs same-sex marriage ceremonies.

On the opposite end, theological conservatives, including those who operate the Roman Catholic Church in Canada and related organizations, officially object to LGBTQ rights such as same-sex marriage and refuse to perform or recognize them.

Education Anti-discrimination policies apply strongly to state school institutions throughout Canada. Catholic educational institutions have tended to object to these laws and have entered into controversies with provincial governments over the prevention of gay-straight alliances being formed in Catholic schools.

Media

Canada has a significant number of LGBT-targeted media outlets.

Pink Triangle Press has published the newspapers Xtra! in Toronto, Xtra! West in Vancouver and Capital Xtra! in Ottawa. In 2015, the company announced that it was folding all three print titles, but would continue publication of the website, Daily Xtra, as a digital media title. The company also formerly published the Toronto-based magazines The Body Politic and fab.

Other past and present LGBT publications in Canada have included Esprit, Rites, Fugues, Wayves, abOUT, Outlooks, OutWords, Perceptions, GO Info, Plenitude and Siren, as well as a short-lived national edition of fab.

The television channel OUTtv, a general interest channel for LGBTQ audiences, broadcasts on digital cable. Two premium subscription channels, Playmen TV and Maleflixxx Television, air gay pornography.

The broadcast group Evanov Communications operated CIRR-FM, a radio station in Toronto which aired a mix of contemporary hit radio music and LGBTQ-oriented talk programming. The company was granted a license to operate a similar radio station, CHRF in Montreal, which was launched in 2015 but converted to an adult standards format within less than a year; the original CIRR, in turn, was shut down in fall 2023.