Ottawa looks to loosen restrictions on changes to sex designation on SIN

The federal department charged with overseeing everysocial insurance number in the country says it is working toloosenrules to make it easier for transgender Canadians to change the sexdesignation on the record.

Employment and Social Development Canada says, among otherthings, social insurance number holders wouldn'tneed a new birthcertificate to change the sex designation on their social insurancerecord.

Currently, someone who wants to make such a change has to providea birth certificate or immigration documentshowing they havechanged their sex designation from birth.

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Since 2015, the department has allowed people to make the changein cases where a revised birth certificate isn't available.

That happened just as the department headed to mediation at theCanadian Human Rights Tribunal after failing to easily allowChristin Milloy to change the designation on her record to female.

Milloy has argued the department doesn't need to collect theinformation at all.

Should mediation fail, the tribunal could force the government tostop collecting the information altogether.

A spokesman for the department says the sex designation isprimarily used for gender-based analysis, "and not fordeterminingeligibility for benefits." It is also used by provincial andfederal agencies who use the social insuranceregistry, like theRCMP, student loan programs and the Canada Revenue Agency, tovalidate someone's identity.

A review of the system and talks with those agencies "revealedconcerns over the complete removal of sex information" from socialinsurance records, department spokesman Josh Bueckert said in anemail.

Bueckert said the department doesn't know how many people ask fora change in the sex designation annually thosenumbers aren'ttracked.