British academic ‘deplatformed’ by Canadian government over gender stance

Prof Alice Sullivan claims her talk was cancelled abruptly because ‘you are not allowed to talk about sex in Canada’

A British academic has claimed she was deplatformed by the Canadian government over her views on transgender issues.
Alice Sullivan, a professor of sociology at University College London, was set to give an online talk to staff at the Canadian Department of Justice last week about the problems with prioritising self-described gender data over biological sex, which the Canadian government now does “by default”.
She was abruptly told the International Women’s Day event had been scrapped, with no official reason.
Prof Sullivan said: “After I had sent my slides, I received a phone call from a member of the department saying that she had been told to cancel the event.”
“She was not authorised to give me any explanation but indicated that, of course, we both knew what the reason was… you are not allowed to talk about sex in Canada.”
Two years ago, Canada became the first country in the world to collect and publish official data on gender identity via its national census. Around 59,000 Canadians said they were transgender, while more than 41,300 said they were non-binary.
Since then, the official policy for government departments and agencies has been to ask people for their gender instead of their sex, unless absolutely necessary.
“In Canada, government data collection defaults to ‘gender’ instead of sex,” said Prof Sullivan. “My talk would have discussed the value of collecting data on both, rather than avoiding data collection on sex.”
While sex refers to the biological and physiological characteristics of females, males and intersex persons, gender is a person’s internal sense of self as a man, woman, a blend of both, or neither, and may not correspond to their sex at birth, according to the World Health Organisation.
A report released in 2018 by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and the Department of Justice said: “Departments and agencies should collect or display gender information by default, unless sex information is specifically needed.”
This would “ensure that the gender of transgender, non-binary and two-spirit individuals is accurately represented”.
There is fierce debate among scientists and government officials over the issues caused by conflating gender identity and biological sex in studies, and how this information should be gathered, stored and used.
The census in England and Wales asked about sexual orientation and gender identity for the first time in 2021 but the question was optional, not mandatory like most other questions.
Prof Sullivan, an expert on data on sex and gender identity, has previously spoken out against the harassment and “no-platforming” of academics involved in the analysis of transgender issues.
Last month, she was appointed by the UK’s Department of Science, Innovation and Technology to lead an official review of data, statistics and research on sex and gender.
She said it was “shocking” that her talk had been cancelled by the Canadian government.
“Surely they should want to open up the conversation,” she said. “Clearly, there are some people in the Department of Justice who want to do that, or I wouldn’t have been invited in the first place, but they have been shut down.”
In a statement to The Telegraph, the Department of Justice Canada said it “cancelled a proposed internal event that was meant to mark International Women’s Day, in favour of promoting a whole-of-government event offered by the Canada School of Public Service that aligns more closely with the theme of the International Women’s Day 2024 of investing in women and accelerating progress”.