About Rainbow Canada
What is this website?
The Rainbow Canada website centralizes information about federal, provincial, and territorial laws and policies protecting the rights and well-being of 2SLGBTQI (Two Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning, and intersex) people in Canada. It’s meant as a tool for understanding, advocating for, and creating public policy to advance 2SLGBTQI rights. However, this index is incomplete. We are currently gathering feedback to identify additional domains to be added to the index in order to more accurately represent inter-provincial/territorial variations in structural stigma. Learn more.
The index covers six topics: family, gender recognition, asylum, hate crime, equality, and freedom of assembly and association. We evaluated 2SLGBTQI policy changes in Canada over time, creating a Rainbow Score for each year, from 1975 to 2019.
Some parts of the index are also applicable to policies at the provincial/territorial level, therefore, we also created a partial index for all provinces and territories.
Who created Rainbow Canada?
Rainbow Canada was created in 2023 by researchers at Simon Fraser University, University of Toronto, Université de Montréal, University of British Columbia, and University of North Carolina. Learn more about the research team.
Egale Canada, Canada’s leading organization for 2SLGBTQI issues and people provides the ongoing stewardship of the Rainbow Canada website
Where did the idea for Rainbow Canada come from?
The idea for Rainbow Canada came from a website called Rainbow Europe. A website created by the European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans & Intersex Association (ILGA-Europe) to provide a comprehensive overview of how much LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other gender and sexual minority) are included, supported in each country through its Rainbow Index. The index has evolved over time, with some items being added or removed each year. We used the 2020 version—the latest at the time this research proposal was funded.
How you can use it to push for change
You can use our open data in your own research, you can also cite our findings to show policy-makers the state of 2SLGBTQI rights in Canada when advocating for change. For example, by showing where a province or territory is lagging compared to others or how Canada, in general, needs to catch up with other European countries.