Front Burner - The Alberta book ban saga

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

Late last week - a list of over 200 books, set to be removed from Edmonton school libraries by October made the rounds online. It was in response to an order set out by Alberta’s education ministry in July to take books with sexually explicit content from the shelves.This applied from kindergarten to Grade 12.On that list? Award-winning works like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.Intense criticism from writers, educators, civil liberties groups followed and on Tuesday the Alberta government paused the order and announced that they’re reworking it.The Investigative Journalism Foundation’s Brett McKay has been covering this push to remove sexually explicit content from school libraries in Alberta. He’s here to talk about the politics behind it, the uproar that ensued and how all this mirrors similar efforts to ban books in the U.S.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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It was about how this list from the Edmonton School Board had been leaked. a list of all of the books that the board had decided to ban in the wake of a government order to take books with sexually explicit content from the shelves. This would apply from kindergarten all the way to grade 12. A massive uproar ensued because the list included beloved classics like Margaret Atwoods The Handmaid's Tale, My Angelou's autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,

and a Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, ironically, set in a world where books are banned. Well, just before we were wrapping up for the day, the province paused that order, and we had to throw that episode out. This doesn't usually happen to us, but here we are. So today, we are bringing the investigative journalism foundations Brett McKay back to redo this conversation. Why? Because the story is not over, actually. The province says it is working on a new order. And how we got here in the first place is super interesting.

So let's get into it. Brett, hey, it is good to have you back for a second try at this. Thank you very much for your generosity. Yeah, happy to be here and talk about this. We are talking at 2 p.m. Eastern time. As of right now, this new rewritten order, the province says they are working on, has not been released. Though we do have some details in where they say they are headed, the direction that they're headed. but I am time-samping this.

So why don't we start with the original order from Alberta Premier Daniel Smith's government, okay? The one that resulted in books like The Handmaid's Tale in a Brave New World making this banned list from the Edmonton Public School Board. Can you walk us through what this first order was actually about? Yeah, this first order, which came out in July, specifically bans explicit sexual content for K to 12 schools. It applies across all grades,

as well as putting restrictions on what they call non-explicit sexual content. Under the new standards, school libraries are not permitted to include material containing explicit sexual content. Non-explicit sexual content may be accessed to students in grades 10 and above, provided it is age-appropriate. And so in this order, it includes written passages, illustrations, photographs, digital images, video, audio, anything for all grades. And it describes explicit sexual content as a detailed or clear depiction of a sexual act. includes masturbation as well as sex for non-explicit sexual content this means containing a depiction of a sexual act that is not detailed or clear and so the distinction here is that prohibition on non-explicit content applies for grades nine and younger and there are exemptions

being made for for materials that might appear in health class, biological functions, menstruation, that sort of thing. And so I remember when the education minister started talking about this publicly back in May, one of the many criticisms and concerns people had when they first, you know, heard about this, was that it would target LGBTQ plus content disproportionately. Yeah, in May, the government minister Nicolides only named four books, four graphic novels. Three of those four were either written by queer authors or deal with LGBTQ plus characters or themes. The province says these four illustrated novels are symptoms of a larger issue in Alberta schools.

Graphic depictions of sexual activity and news. As these similar book bands have played out in the U.S., this is something that's been documented as well, where it's typically LGBTQ authors or books or traditionally marginalized groups who are being singled out. A big part of this, I think, is that the way these book bands are structured, they rely on a complaint system. to some extent. So like the government of Alberta or Florida, Texas, and Utah, have set out these standards which must apply to all library catalogs. They're not naming every single book they want removed, but there's a stipulation that libraries and school boards must have a procedure in place by which anyone connected to the school, a student-parent teacher, someone on the board, can launch a complaint against a title and have it,

either reviewed, reconsider access levels, like what grades it should be available to, or removed entirely. And so with that in place, you've seen what people find offensive and think should be reviewed or removed has swayed towards, you know, books dealing with race, sexual orientation, and gender. I know one of the books that was specifically named by the Education Ministers, called Gender Queer. It's become actually one of the most banned books in the United States. The Lapeer District Library controversy has been raised over a book titled Gender Queer. That has county prosecutors saying the book should be removed from shelves. The board was set to make a decision on a book, a parent wanted banned from the library.

JCPS parents are pushing the school board now to immediately remove a book from school libraries. The book is called Gender Queer. It's this graphic memoir that explores navigating sexual identity and queer relations. relationships growing up, it includes illustrations and passages about puberty, sexual experiences. But some of the panels, for example, include depictions of sexual acts like oral sex. There's this panel where a character with like a strap-on is receiving oral sex from another, there's masturbation, there's erotic fantasies. And I just want to note it has been praised as a resource for LGBTQ plus youth, right? And it's not like it was, you know, widely available in elementary schools across Alberta.

I may fair to say this is widely thought to be a book for, you know, older students. Yes, gender queer was awarded the American Library Association's Alex Award for books that have a special appeal to young adults between 12 and 18. My name is Maya Koviv. I am the author of Gender Queer a Memoir. I felt very alone in my gender experiences. a teenager. And I'm very grateful that as an adult, I've been able to share this. And instead, I've been able to build such a loving and strong community out of sharing. On September 2nd, when the minister announced that this book ban was going to be paused, well, they reviewed the language of the ministerial order. He also released the list of where

these books were found, including genderqueer. This is the four graphic novels that had been named. Up until yesterday, they had publicly never talked about what libraries they were found in, saying that it would potentially draw harassment or criticism, but with the controversy, the minister finally released it, showing that none of these books were found in a school that didn't have middle school or high school grades in them. Okay, so this issue has been percolating for months in July, this order comes out, and it really comes to a head last week because the Edmonton Public School Board, they have this list of what they were planning to ban, and this list.

got leaked. And it was pretty wide-ranging. I mentioned in the intro, The Handmaid's Tale, Myangelo, these are books banned from K to 12, and just walk me through some more of the titles that were going to be straight up banned K to 12. There were other classic authors like Philip Roth, as well as contemporary young adult fiction, like the perks of being a Wallflower, which a lot of people are probably familiar with the great sequential artist, Brian K. Vaughn, as some of his works appeared on there. And, I mean, 200 plus titles of graphic novels, manga, novels, novella, short stories. A lot of Y.A. kind of popular fiction, Hey? Yeah, yeah, seemingly. In the list that Minister Nicolades released of like where we found

these books, blankets by Craig Thompson appeared to be being used as part of a class. You know, had multiple copies at one high school in Edmonton. And so, you know, when you note that there's a lot of young adult fiction or Y-A content on there. Because it was being, in some cases, used by schools or otherwise had been chosen for being appropriate for those grades. For those who might not be familiar with blankets, why might it be taught in a class? And like, why might it be banned? It's a coming-of-age story where the character dealing with a lot of,

autobiographical details is struggling with his devout Christian faith, having his first sexual experiences and so on, and ends up really questioning his beliefs. And so in my mind, you know, as this book was given to me at the conversations I remember having about it, that was the main takeaway. There are illustrations of, of sex, and it deals with sexual abuse. And those two things are why it's been banned. This was also a book named in Utah specifically when they were implementing their new standards for explicit content or pornographic content. There was a second component to this list that dealt with the non-explicit sexual content, right?

that would be banned only for K to grade 9s. On that list, F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, George Orwell's 1984, which is about censorship. And, you know, I think when we're talking, we're going to get into some reaction now. I've heard people say that, like, of course, you wouldn't read a kindergartner, these books. But maybe grade 8, grade 9, you know, different story, right? So those would have been banned for that age group. You know, shopping for a car should be exciting, not exhausting, and that's where Car Gurus comes in. They have advanced search tools, unbiased deal ratings, and price history, so you know a great deal when you see one.

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which is on the list like Atwoods that would have removed it from the shelves K to 12, said it's disheartening to see that the American epidemic of book banning has spread to Canada. I know you've been reporting on this for a while now. Tell me more about what you made of the, the response to the leaked list? I mean, I think the response, the leaked list was probably what whoever leaked it was hoping would happen, which is to draw a ton of attention to what is happening in Edmonton Public Schools and different school boards across the province.

High school, I think that they've overreached on this policy. They've obviously put books on there that there was never. any intention of having them target those books. But I think we need to exercise a little judgment here. I think we made it. EPSB's list was the first clear examples of if we apply this, here is what it would look like. You know, here is what risks being removed. And so I think that gave a concrete example with way more titles that people are familiar with. Totally. I just think probably a lot of people are thinking right now that these, are books that they read in high school.

Leaking the list garnered a lot of attention, but it also moved the province, right? Like Daniel Smith, she came out after the list was leaked, and she essentially accused the school board of, like, taking it too far. Edmonton Public is clearly doing a little vicious compliance over what the direction is, and so if they need us to hold their hand through the process to identify what kind of materials are appropriate for senior high school students, what kind of materials are appropriate for junior high school students and what kind of materials are appropriate for elementary school students.

We will more than happily work with them to work through their list one by one. Just a note here, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrug also got panned. This is one of Smith's favorite books. This is a book that makes a case for laissez-faire capitalism. It's really beloved in conservative circles. and the province then announced that it was pausing the order. Well, it'll be paused for a couple of hours while the ministerial order is rewritten. And just tell me more about what they say they're going to do now.

So my understanding is they are going to go back and rewrite the order in a way to prevent what they call the classics from being taken off the shelves. And it sounds as though the focus will be on image-based books. So, like, again, back to graphic novels and manga. The direction will be to take books with pornographic images out of the libraries and to leave the classics alone. I think that they're... It came across as though it would be focusing specifically on those formats, which maybe doesn't come as a surprise to me because those first four examples they gave were all graphic

novels. If you look at how they behind the scenes researched what books were objectionable, they drew primarily on lists of graphic novels that had been banned. They created their own internal documents that were culled from other sources online, which they then used to search for titles in Edmonton and Calgary Public Schools. And one of the primary sources for this was a list of bandbooks that had been created by the Austin Library. And so it does seem to me as though that had been their target from the beginning. I know from your reporting that there are groups who have been very vocal in trying to get the province to act here, right?

And do you think that this pause and the direction that they're going vis-a-vis the rewritten order will satisfy these groups? Who are these groups and what do you think they'll do now? I think whatever final form this order takes, the groups that were asking for this will be happy with it in the sense that they have managed to get this implemented at some level. And so, you know, in May when this was announced for the first time, Minister Nicolides said that he had been approached by parents who had concerns about some books they had found in their kids school library. We learned shortly after that there were two far more organized groups who have been pushing for these types of restrictions who brought materials to the minister. Parents for Choice in Education and Action for Canada. And among the list of materials they provided, you know, both named gender, queer, and Fun Home. I find home, it was another one of those graphic novels about growing up in rural Pennsylvania.

The author draws on her sexual identity. There are pretty frank examinations of sexual development in it. Yeah, and was one of the four presented as examples of things that should be restricted and should be removed. The group claims to have supplied the province with a list of books that were negatively influencing students just by being available. When we give it to children from the school, we give the stamp of authority to it. The school said this was good for me to read. These two groups, far from being just concerned parents, Action for Canada has been leading the charge,

trying to get books restricted in public libraries in Canada. The group came out of the pandemic, had organized a lot against public. health measures and is pivoted and is really focusing on what they describe as sexual content of public libraries, which they view as being part of a conspiracy to undermine the family and force sexual identity politics on children. And so they've been heavily inspired by moms for liberty in the United States. A far right rapidly growing group that in the last two years morphed from challenging mask mandates and remote learning during the COVID pandemic

to a major player in Republican politics, endorsing hundreds of school board candidates. Across the country, chapters now often target specific books and school curriculums that reference LGBTQ plus families and promote racial inclusivity and equity. The program that they have developed, which involves producing a list of objectionable books with examples pulled from them that you can then take to your public library, search, find, if they have it, file a challenge. In most cases, public libraries have kept and retained it, but the Canadian Library Association has named Action for Canada as being probably the leading group responsible for the surge in challenges nationwide. And so that

is one of the sources of content that was given to the ministry. The other parents of choice in education is a so-called parental rights group in Alberta that has more political connections to the UCP. One of the groups taking credit is called Parents for Choice in Education. We had two conversations with the minister. One was about three years ago when it first came to our attention as a possibility. And then we had a chat with the minister last year. although we certainly played a role.

They have a UCP MLA sitting on their board during the last leadership race for the UCP. They hosted a debate between the candidates and have been pushing for a lot of changes in the same vein, you know, against GSAs a lot to do with sexual orientation and gender identity education. and these were two of the groups which early on were giving examples and, you know, pushing the government to do something about these types of materials being in school libraries. Brett, before we wrap up today, final question, for you. We've talked about what has been playing out in Alberta today in the context of campaigns to ban books, not just the schools, but libraries and also not just here in Canada,

but across the United States where really they have been incredibly popular, Florida, Iowa. In a day and age where kids can access anything that they want online, why do you think that we're hearing more about book bans in the in the U.S. also in Canada, too. Why have they become such a culture war issue? Yeah, I read some interesting research on this recently, actually, where scholars had looked at where book bands were happening in the U.S. in 2021 and 2022. And what they found was that the strongest predictor of whether or not a school district or county had put in some sort of new book ban. was a decline in voter representation for the Republican Party in those counties.

And so you're looking at counties that have historically been strongholds that were guaranteed wins that lost ground in the 2020 election. And so they interpreted this as book bans being a form of political action to win back support from the base to the party, right? And so it is not a great form of censorship. The same researchers noted that when books are banned, there's a surge in interest in them. They sell more copies. You know, I looked at the Google Analytics for the four books that were named in Canada and

Alberta, and the highest points of interest in them are immediately following the ministerial order and immediately following the first press conference in May. And so in terms of keeping kids away from this content, it's not very effective, but as a political action to drive voters into your party, I think it's proven to be effective. And you mentioned, you know, this being a hot culture war topic. And I think part of that, too,

you need to look at how effective grassroots organizing has become and how important it's become to mainstream parties. And so with the U.S. media ecosystem already focusing on this, you know, I've seen this bubbling up in Canada gradually. And so from a political perspective, you can look at what are people already talking about. Is this an actionable item? You know, they get some groups coming to them directly. And from that perspective, I think it makes sense that this would be seized on as something that already has a built-in base of support, right, that people are already talking about and upset about, which then you can present yourself as providing a solution to it.

Brett, thank you very much for doing this. Second time is a charm. Thank you. Thanks again, Fred. having me on. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thank you so much for listening.

Talk to you tomorrow.