Different Canadian studies surveyed different populations in different years, and mixing them together without saying so produces misleading claims — "Canadian adults," "Canadian university students," and "Canadians 40–59" are not interchangeable groups. Every stat below names its source and population directly.
The three main sources:
- Tina Fetner's Sex in Canada survey — 2,303 Canadian adults ages 18–90, quota-matched to Canada by age, gender, region, language, and visible-minority status, and deliberately oversampling LGB respondents; surveyed in 2018.
- The 2019 Trojan/SIECCAN Sexual Health of Canadian University Students Study — 1,500 students ages 18–24.
- A separate 2016 Trojan/SIECCAN midlife study — 2,400 Canadians ages 40–59.
A handful of smaller, distinct studies are named individually below. Where a number isn't published anywhere we could verify, we've said so rather than estimating it — see what we're not claiming at the bottom, including a note on data we're deliberately leaving out.
Jump to a topic
Every topic below now has its own full data page — stats, tables, and caveats intact. This page stays as the sourcing-discipline overview and the master bibliography.
- How often Canadians have sex
- Masturbation frequency
- Oral sex
- The orgasm gap
- Affection and intimacy
- Pleasure and satisfaction
- Favourite positions
- Pornography
- Sex toys
- Anal sex
- Condom use
- Lubrication and dryness
- Open relationships and non-monogamy
- Alcohol and sex
- Regional differences
- Religion and sexuality
- STIs and HIV
How often Canadians have sex
Married Canadians report having sex, and orgasming, more often than unmarried Canadians — 56% vs. 35% had sex in the past month (Fetner, Sex in Canada, 2018). Parents with kids at home report more sex than non-parents, not less.
A separate, more recent 2025 survey of committed relationships broadly (not just marriages) gives a fuller weekly-to-never frequency breakdown, plus how often married midlife adults cite obligation vs. wanting to do something nice for a partner as a motive.
Read the full data: How Often Canadians Actually Have Sex →
Masturbation frequency
Men report masturbating meaningfully more often than women in both a university-age sample (18–24) and a midlife sample (40–59) — for example, 60% of men vs. 23% of women aged 40–59 masturbated weekly or more.
Read the full data: Canadian Masturbation Frequency →
Oral sex
Singles received oral sex more often than married respondents at their most recent encounter, in both an 18–90 general sample (45% vs. 29%) and a separate 40–59 midlife sample.
Read the full data: Canadian Oral Sex Stats →
The orgasm gap
A large, well-documented gap: 86% of cisgender men vs. 62% of cisgender women had an orgasm at their most recent heterosexual encounter (Andrejek, Fetner & Heath, 2022). Receiving oral sex predicted a meaningfully higher orgasm rate for women; masturbation history didn't.
Separately, only 7% of all women surveyed said they faked an orgasm at their most recent encounter — a different, often-misquoted number from the 23% figure specific to women who didn't orgasm that encounter.
Read the full data: The Canadian Orgasm Gap →
Affection and intimacy
80% kissed and 69% cuddled during their most recent sexual encounter (Fetner, Sex in Canada, 2018) — most Canadians already do the "aftercare" piece unprompted. Reported emotional intimacy during the encounter varied more by sexual orientation, from over 70% (straight men and women, bisexual women) down to about 54% (gay men).
Read the full data: Canadian Affection and Intimacy Stats →
Pleasure and satisfaction
Most recent encounters skewed positive across two separate studies: 66% rated their most recent encounter "quite a bit" or "extremely" pleasurable in the 18–90 sample, and 65% called theirs "very pleasurable" in the separate 40–59 midlife sample.
Read the full data: Canadian Sexual Satisfaction Stats →
Favourite positions (lower confidence — read the caveat)
Unlike the studies above, none of the three surveys on this specific question are nationally representative. Doggy style led by a wide margin in all three anyway — 62% in a 2024 sex-toy retailer survey, and again in a larger but 20-year-old 2006 student survey.
A separate reader survey found most people use two or three positions per encounter.
Read the full data: Canadian Favourite Sex Positions →
Pornography
A different, narrower question than "have you ever watched porn": 22% of sexually active Canadian adults said they always/often use porn to enhance their sex life (Leger, 2025), ranging from 11% of women to 31% of men, and considerably higher among singles and non-monogamous respondents than people in committed, monogamous relationships.
A separate student-sample study measured actual viewing frequency instead and found a similar gender split. This data lives in full on our porn and your sex life guide, alongside the practical side of the topic.
Read the full guide: Porn and Your Sex Life →
Sex toys
Two genuinely different questions produce very different headline numbers: 23% regularly incorporate toys into sex (Leger, 2025), while 52.3% have ever used one, in a separate lifetime-measure study. Regular use drops sharply with age, and vibrators lead every category surveyed, with dildos a distant second.
Read the full data: Canadian Sex Toy Use Stats →
Anal sex
Combines three separate pictures:
- The general population and students — 27.1% of men, 12.6% of women reported it at their most recent encounter.
- Gay and bisexual men specifically — 44%–79% depending on the survey and time window.
- Straight men and pegging, where we found no representative Canadian study at all. The closest comparison is U.S. data, clearly labeled as such.
Read the full data: Canadian Anal Sex Stats →
Trans Canadians' sexual health: a correction
An earlier version of this page cited sexual-behavior statistics for trans Canadians from the Trans PULSE Project and the Canadian Trans Youth Health Survey. We've removed them.
On checking the source methodology directly: Trans PULSE surveyed "433 trans participants age 16 and older," and the Trans Youth Health Survey explicitly split respondents into "younger (14–18 years) and older (19–25 years)" brackets — both sampling frames include people under 18.
That's the same reason we exclude Statistics Canada's youth sexual-behavior data elsewhere on this page, and it applies here too: this is an 18+ site, and we don't think publishing sexual-behavior statistics about people under 18 belongs here, even from otherwise well-conducted, respectfully-framed research.
We'd rather retract numbers we already published than leave them up once we'd verified the problem. For genuinely useful trans-specific sexual health content, see our guide to sex and intimacy for trans people, which doesn't lean on this data.
Condom use
About 30% of last-10 penile-vaginal encounters involved a condom, overall (Fetner et al., PLOS ONE, 2020). Single Canadians used them more consistently than married/cohabiting ones, and use varied by orientation and by how a partner was met — 78% vs. 55% for dating-app matches vs. others, in a separate student sample.
Read the full data: Canadian Condom Use →
Lubrication and dryness
Four different questions kept separate: dryness rates (14.7%–28.8% depending on the sample and age group), lube use by act and age, broader product use, and what type — a real gap in the published Canadian data.
Read the full data: Canadian Lubrication and Dryness Stats →
Open relationships and non-monogamy
2.4% of Canadian adults were currently in an open relationship, 19.7% had ever been in one, and 11.9% said it would be their ideal (2017 nationally representative survey) — with no significant satisfaction difference versus monogamous relationships.
Read the full data: Canadian Open Relationship Stats →
Alcohol and sex
About 1 in 5 Canadians had a drink before their most recent sexual encounter (Fetner, Sex in Canada, 2018) — and younger adults weren't more likely to report this than older ones. In a separate gay/bi/MSM sample, 62.1% reported sober sex as the norm.
Read the full data: Canadian Alcohol and Sex Stats →
Regional differences across Canada
Generally small — smaller than the anglophone/francophone gap — but Quebec led on partnered sex, masturbation, and oral sex, while B.C. reported the lowest rates on those measures; the Prairies led on sex-toy use, Quebec the least.
Read the full data: Regional Sex Differences Across Canada →
Religion and sexuality: a real gap in Canadian data
Genuinely thinner research than on age, gender, or relationship status — no simple by-denomination behaviour table exists, and we've deliberately excluded the two studies (the Toronto Teen Survey and a 1,479-adult study without published percentages) that would otherwise fill that gap unreliably. What does exist: sample religious composition, and a dated 1995 Statistics Canada contraception-method breakdown by faith.
Read the full data: Religion and Sexuality in Canada →
STIs and HIV in Canada
Official Public Health Agency of Canada surveillance — reported diagnoses, not true infection estimates. Chlamydia remains Canada's most commonly reported STI (104,426 cases in 2021); gonorrhea and syphilis have both risen sharply since 2018; HIV diagnoses in 2023 broke down as 39.4% heterosexual contact and 36.0% male-to-male sexual contact among known exposure categories.
Read the full data: Canadian STI and HIV Stats →
What we're not claiming, and what we've deliberately left out. The underlying Sex in Canada dataset is publicly archived, and some genuinely interesting cross-tabs almost certainly exist in it that we haven't been able to verify from a public source yet:
- Kissing and cuddling broken down by sexual identity, relationship status, or province.
- Exact condom-use percentages for single versus married respondents — the paper establishes the difference statistically without giving simple headline numbers for each group.
- Any figure on parent-specific oral sex or monthly-frequency rates.
- Exact prevalence numbers from the 2025 Quebec sex-toy study, whose public abstract only gives directional findings.
Rather than estimate those, we've left them out. Separately, the three position-preference surveys above are the best Canadian data that exists on that question, but none are nationally representative — treat them accordingly.
Two more specific gaps worth naming directly. The Sex in Canada survey asked respondents whether their most recent encounter included manual genital stimulation ("hand jobs"/partnered masturbation).
Separately, a published analysis of the same survey confirms breast/nipple stimulation was measured too — the researchers found feminist-identifying men were significantly more likely than non-feminist men to engage in it with a female partner.
In both cases, the overall national percentage hasn't been published anywhere we can verify, only that the question was asked. We'd rather say "this was measured, the number isn't public yet" than guess at one.
A separate, deliberate exclusion: Statistics Canada also publishes detailed sexual-behaviour survey data for 15–24-year-olds (sexual debut, condom use by age, contraception, sexual-identity demographics), drawn from sampling frames that include people under 18.
Clove is an 18+ site that isn't directed at minors, and we don't think publishing sexual-behaviour statistics about that age group belongs here even in anonymized, aggregate survey form — so none of that data appears on this page, regardless of how well-sourced it is.
The one exception is STI/HIV diagnosis surveillance above, which is public-health disease reporting, not survey data about individuals' sexual behavior.
Sources
- Tina Fetner, Sex in Canada (UBC Press, 2024), based on the 2018 Sex in Canada survey. Summarized in Long Play, reported on by CityNews, and reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada.
- Fetner et al., "Condom use in penile-vaginal intercourse among Canadian adults: Results from the Sex in Canada survey," PLOS ONE, 2020.
- Andrejek, Fetner & Heath, "Climax as Work: Heteronormativity, Gender Labor, and the Gender Gap in Orgasms," Gender & Society, 2022 — an analysis of Sex in Canada data.
- Stick & Fetner, "Feminist Men and Sexual Behavior: Analyses of Men's Sex with Women," 2021 — another analysis of Sex in Canada data, confirming manual and breast/nipple stimulation were both measured in the survey, though not published as overall prevalence figures.
- Trojan/SIECCAN, 2019 Sexual Health of Canadian University Students Study — designed by SIECCAN and University of Guelph researchers, surveyed by Leger. Preliminary report (PDF) and full report (PDF).
- Trojan/SIECCAN, 2016 midlife study of 2,400 Canadians ages 40–59. Reported via Newswire.
- Open relationship prevalence: a 2017 nationally representative survey of 2,003 Canadian adults, published on PubMed.
- EMIS-2017 Canadian results (gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men, n=5,165), published on PMC.
- Public Health Agency of Canada, national STI and HIV surveillance reports (chlamydia/overview, gonorrhea 2022, syphilis 2023).
- Leger, Canadian Sex Life Survey, January 2025 (932 sexually active Canadian adults) — frequency, porn, and sex-toy data by gender, age, orientation, relationship status, and monogamy.
- 28,500-student postsecondary STI risk-factor study across 41 Canadian institutions, published on PMC — anal-sex frequency data.
- Canadian young-adult traveler survey (not nationally representative), published on PMC.
- CCHS vs. Sex Now comparison of gay/bi Canadian men's anal-sex rates, published on PMC, with methodology context from PHAC.
- Lambert et al., "Correlates of Unprotected Anal Sex at Last Sexual Episode: Analysis from a Surveillance Study of Men Who Have Sex with Men in Montreal," AIDS and Behavior, 2011 — couple vs. non-couple partner anal sex.
- Vancouver GBM event-level analysis (2,513 sexual-partner events), published on PMC.
- PinkCherry.ca, 2024 customer survey (190 respondents) — position preferences, toy-type data, and solo/partner-use split; not nationally representative.
- 2006 survey of 2,484 students at 150 Canadian colleges and universities, ages 18–23 — position preferences, reported by News24.
- ELLE Canada Sex and Relationship Survey — magazine reader survey, not nationally representative.
- Trojan/SIECCAN, Modern Sex Trends Report, 2019 (university students ages 18–24) — porn-viewing frequency.
- Sex-toy use in Québec: a 2025 peer-reviewed study of 1,959 adults, published on PubMed.
- Sex-toy use and vaginal health: a 1,435-participant Canadian survey (recruited online, overwhelmingly cisgender women), published in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality and related work on PMC and OUCI — same survey also covers vaginal moisturizer/lubricant use.
- Vaginal dryness, 18–64: Canadian data cited in a lubricant-use study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, via ScienceDirect.
- Vaginal dryness and sexual problems among midlife Canadians (ages 40–59), a national survey of 2,400 adults, published on PubMed.
- Lubrication difficulty among Canadian women 40–80: an earlier national survey on sexual disorders and help-seeking, published on PubMed.
- Lubricant product categories available through Canadian retailers: a 2025 clinical review, "Approach to lubricant use for sexual activity," published on PMC.
- Lubricant type during receptive anal sex — U.S. data (Los Angeles and Baltimore), not Canadian: published on PMC.
- Motives for sex among married/cohabiting midlife Canadians (ages 40–59), published on PubMed.
- Religious affiliation of the Sex in Canada penile-vaginal-sex analytical sample, and its relationship to condom use: Fetner et al., PLOS ONE / PMC.
- Statistics Canada, "Report on the Demographic Situation in Canada" (1995 data) — contraceptive method by religious affiliation.
- Not used on this page: the Toronto Teen Survey's religion-by-sexual-behaviour breakdown (1,185 respondents, mostly teenagers) — excluded under our 18+ policy — and a national 1,479-adult Canadian study modeling oral sex and other behaviours against religiosity, whose published abstract doesn't include by-denomination percentages.
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