Verified by 
Key points
- Canadian attitudes about childhood sexuality are generally less fearful than Americans'.
- In public bathrooms, Canada acknowledges condom use.
- Canada's rate of sex-related crime is half that of the United States.
When it comes to sex, Canadian society is reasonable. Civilized.
I recently spoke all day in Calgary, a city the size of metro Denver, 700 miles north of Boise. A professional group promoting sexual health hosted my visit. I’ve always found Canadians very pleasant. Oh, I sometimes get irritated there: They won't cross the street at a red light when no cars are in sight. Taxis don’t weave in and out of traffic. And the weather is legendary; it snowed the day after I left, on the first day of fall.
But we can all admire Canada’s culture regarding sexuality. It’s not perfect, but here are just a few features that put America to shame.
Sex and the Bathroom
In Canada, the public health message isn’t “don’t have sex,” as it is in many American legislatures. It starts when you land at a Canadian airport. The first stop, of course, is the bathroom (“washroom” in Canadian-ese). And in every one, you find condom vending machines, because that’s what millions of adults use when they have intercourse.
The next day, my workshop at the university started at 9 am, so when we took our morning break, everyone headed for the washroom. But women workshop attendees greatly outnumbered the men, so of course, the line outside the women’s bathroom was huge. Until, of course, the women went into the men’s room.
They didn’t wait until it was empty, and they didn’t sheepishly apologize. Basically, everyone acted the way people act in mixed-gender grocery stores—which is to say, no one made a fuss. Rather, we all did what we came to do and did it the way we always do–calmly and briskly, without rushing or complaining.
If any women stared at me while I peed, they did it so discretely that I didn’t notice.
Kids and Porn
The subject of my training workshop was pornography, so I did some legal research to prepare with Vancouver attorney Paul Kent.
I confirmed that in Canada, it’s actually legal for kids to watch porn; ill-advised, of course, but not illegal. That means that divorcing parents can’t use porn-watching as a weapon in a custody battle. And it means that if a kid shows another kid any sex-related material (which is what kids have always done), they’re not breaking a law. The meta-message is that simply watching porn doesn’t automatically damage kids. Interestingly, there’s no evidence that Canadian kids watch more porn than their American cousins.
And while it isn’t legal for kids to sext each other—that’s classified as child porn, just as it is in the U.S.—the consequences for doing so in Canada are dramatically different. Kids don’t go to jail or register as sex offenders. Their phone is typically confiscated, and there may be probation, but the government doesn’t ruin kids’ lives in an attempt to show them that sexting will ruin their lives.
Sex Offender Registry
As in America, Canada has a National Sex Offender Registry. But it’s far less cruel, without being less useful to the police. First, minors can only be placed on it if they’re criminally sentenced as an adult. Second, a consumer can’t casually find records of sex offenders, and so no vigilante groups can try to isolate and destroy anyone. Compare that with American law, which can often be so punitive that it virtually limits registered offenders who have completed their jail time to living under freeway overpasses or in the desert.
Anti-Porn Hysteria
Like the governments of other nations, in 2016 the Canadian Parliament convened hearings and collected research to decide whether pornography posed a danger to society. Like the reports commissioned by U.S. presidents Nixon and Reagan, this one exonerated porn. Unlike these American reports, the Canadian study wasn’t ignored; it was actually used to formulate government policy. As my attorney consultant said, and my audience of over 100 professionals confirmed, there is very little moral panic about porn in Canada. What "PornPanic" there is in Canada generally comes from religious groups. For example, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada criticized the government’s decision to rely only on experts who had done peer-reviewed research—which, they complained, “excluded some important views.” Yes, the Canadian government actually depended on science when collecting its data.
As with so many other things, Canadian society’s perspective on pornography is basically, "Do what you want in private. Just don’t punch me in the nose while waving your hand in the air." And it works: According to the U.S. Justice Department, the Canadian rate of sex-related crime is less than half that of America's (as is the country's homicide rate).
We have a lot to learn from our northern cousins.
