The Ben Mulroney Show - Alberta to create guideline for ‘age-appropriate’ books allowed in schools

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Alberta to create guideline for ‘age-appropriate’ books allowed in schools Guest: Demetrios Nicolaides, Alberta minister of Education and Childcare If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And if you're of a certain age, you're older than your kids. I want you to cast your minds back to when you were kids and you went to the school library. Do you ever remember coming up to a book in the school library that when you brought it home your parents were outraged that it was quote unquote inappropriate for you to be reading? Because I don't. I don't remember a time when I was a kid where I encountered a book that was overly sexual or overly violent or shared a particular political philosophy that was deemed inappropriate. I don't remember any of that. For some reason, it is a product of our time.

And the Alberta government is launching a survey that will impact the books that are found in K through 12 schools across the province, saying that multiple books have been found in quote, some school libraries that show quote, extremely graphic and age inappropriate content. There are, to me, this as a parent, this makes complete sense. There are people on the other side of this fight that are suggesting that it is a slippery slope that can lead to book banning.

So to lay out exactly what this is, I'm very pleased that we are joined by Dimitrios Nikolaidis, the Alberta Minister of Education and Child Care. Minister, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us on the Ben Mulroney show. Ben Mulroney My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

David Pakman So this is, it's a survey. There are those who say, ah, it's a slippery slope, and that's going to take us down the path of banning books to which you say what. Ben Mulroney Not at all. This isn't a slippery slope at all. The government's not interested in banning books to which you say what? Not at all. This isn't a slippery slope at all. The government's not interested in banning books. I'm not interested in banning books. I am however, extremely interested in making sure

that we do not have books in our school classrooms, in our school libraries, excuse me, that have graphic depictions of sexual acts. I mean, some of the examples that have been brought to our attention include, for example, graphic images of oral sex, of molestation, that does not belong anywhere in a school library. And so, we just want to make sure that we have some very clear standards about what kind of material should be available in our school libraries irrespective of topic or subject. And Minister, I was watching a news story on this and a representative

of a parents group said something that resonated with me that said look it's not necessarily the problem isn't the books it's the process that allows the books in there is a process that was allowed to be created that has allowed for inappropriate content to be justified and reverse engineered into a place where there's a home for it in these school libraries. And so I wonder as you launch this survey, is the logical conclusion to the survey an overhaul of the system that allows for these books to end up in a school library in the first place?

I think that's a very important consideration. I want answers to those questions as well. I want to get a better understanding of what process, what procedure was in place that allowed these books to end up in our school libraries in the first place. So I want to, apart from the survey, you know, the survey, I want to get a better understanding of the views and priorities of Albertans and use that to help inform how we draft these new policies. But outside of the survey, I want to have some more detailed questions with our school boards to understand

what are the current practices, the current processes, why is this not working? Because clearly it's not working. And how can we address it? And look, as I said, off the top of the segment, I don't know if you heard, is that I don't remember this being a problem when I was a kid.

This is a new problem. And this is, I'm speculating, but I think I'm speculating from an educated perspective, especially as a parent with kids in the Ontario public school system, that there are new forces at play in the world of public education. And there are some activist minded people

who feel it is incumbent upon them to introduce our kids to things that should be the exclusive domain of parents. Yeah, you know, it's an interesting point. I certainly don't remember these kinds of issues or this kind of material showing up in my school when when I was going to school as well. But you know, I think different individuals of course feel that there should be different priorities and there's always competing interests. And I think it's important as well that we expose students to a range of different views so that they can develop strong perspectives about complex subjects and help them be a lot more intellectually stronger than we were and we are. But obviously this goes way too far.

And again, I want to conduct a much more deeper investigation to find out how did this happen? How did these books end up in our school libraries? And how are we going to make sure that that doesn't happen again? Well, I interviewed somebody months ago about this very subject. And he said that the problem is, while it eliminates some books that should go,

both sides on the political spectrum use the opportunity to eliminate too many books that they just disagree with, that they're uncomfortable with, that they feel that they just don't like. And it might not be that they just disagree with, that they're uncomfortable with, that they feel that they just don't like. And it might not be that they're graphic, they're just not liked by the adults. And so how do we ensure that the system

that would replace this one would focus, would have a very narrow focus? Because I think that's the concern for people who oppose this is that that narrow focus could become overly broad. Well, that's a very good point. And that's exactly my intent is to keep it very narrow, right? This isn't about books or topics that I find disagreeable or that I wouldn't read or that I wouldn't want my kids reading. This is, this is about making sure that we don't have graphic depictions of molestation and graphic images that showcase oral sex in our school libraries.

So this might tend to craft some policies and guardrails that are very narrow that make sure these extreme types of offenders do not find their way into our school libraries. Because going further and having a big broad policy objective with respect to offensive or questionable subjects or content could open the door quite wide and could be misused. So my intent is something very narrow. I mean, I'm surprised that I even need to put something like this in place. It should just be commonplace that we don't have images that have graphic sexual acts in our school, that we don't have hustler and playboy and other...

Yeah, just because it's drawn, just because it's drawn by the hand as opposed to a photograph, doesn't make it any less graphic. And to the developing mind, it's just, it's inappropriate. And look, I don't understand, because, you know, in me, you have somebody aligns with you on this. I don't understand what, like, if there's a parent out there who feels that this is vital information for their child to consume, they can consume it at home. That is the parent's right. That is the government.

That is a person like myself saying, you as the parent are the final deciders to what your child learns. But at school, that is not appropriate. That's an empowering of the parent, not anything else. I don't get why that's not getting through. Yeah, I completely agree. You know, every parent, every adult has the ability

to look at any kind of topic they want, to find that material, make it available to their kids, that's their own discretion, that's their own authority when it comes to and their own ability when it comes to parental autonomy. But again, having some of this material on the bookshelves of school libraries is completely inappropriate and the thing that really caused me a lot of significant concern was the fact that many of these titles were appearing in our K to nine schools.

So, you know, kids as young as five, six could be potentially accessing this material. And that's completely inappropriate. So minister, walk me through the process. What happens next? So we have opened up the survey. We will be getting more perspective from parents to get a better understanding of where are the boundaries or what kind of lines can we draw here?

And more importantly, what do they feel is most appropriate? So that survey will be open for a couple of weeks. We'll also be talking to our school boards to get a better understanding of how this happened in the first place. Take a look at the processes. I will develop some new standards after I've listened to parents and school boards and put those new standards in place for the upcoming school year.

So those new standards should be available within the next month or so. And we'll probably have some more to say at that time when we actually develop the new standards. Well, I hope that when you do, you'll come back on the Ben Mulroney show and share your findings. We appreciate it, Minister.

Thank you so much. Absolutely, yeah, would love to. Thanks for having me. All the best. All the best to you. All right, welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And in our previous segment, we spoke with the Minister of Education in Alberta

about a survey that the government is running to figure out what books are appropriate and inappropriate for children K through 12 to be accessing in public libraries after it was discovered by a number of parents that there were some books that they deemed highly problematic. And so some people are saying that this is a slippery slope that could lead to book banning. And others are saying, no, this is a problem that is only popped reared its ugly head in the past few years. This was not a problem 10 years ago, or 15 years ago, 20 years ago. It's a problem today. And we got to, we got to tamp down on it. This was not a problem that parents had to

deal with. And, and I agree with that, that as a parent, as a parent with kids in a public school system, I wholeheartedly agree with that. If I want my kids to be learning about something sexually explicit, that's my job, that's my right, that's my responsibility, not a school board's. And so, but I may be off base, maybe you can change my mind. Let's see what Chris has to say.

Chris, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Let me just say, great show as always. Thank you. You're awesome, amazing topic. Thank you. I think your point is right on. At the end of the day, if you want to educate your kids, it's your job as a parent, if you see something

that's not there to supplement that and educate them with that, okay? I just think in general, as our society, we have a really hard time right now, as parents in general, looking at the school system and thinking that it's supplementary parenting. We use it as daycare now. We look at these teachers,

they're supposed to make our kids polite. They're supposed to be strict and all these things. And I just think this is another situation where parents are taking this responsibility and putting it onto the school system so they can raise our children. Well, Chris, hold on, hold on, Chris. Let's talk about this, Chris, because I disagree. I think parents want to parent and I think they want we want our teachers to educate. Now, there are some parents who are being spread too thin and rely on the schools for all sorts of stuff

that's probably not in their domain, but by and large, parents wanna be the parents and teachers wanna be teachers. To me, this has, and again, I'm speculating here, but to me, this feels like there is a vein of activism that has been active in certain school boards around the country, dropping content into libraries that doesn't belong there.

And the reason I feel that way is I've seen stories, at least in my own hometown here in Toronto, of a school board deciding that it's okay to take kids on a very highly politically charged school field trip that they didn't ask parents permission for. That wouldn't have happened 15, 20 years ago, but there are certain people, and as you'll find in all walks of life, there are militants that are overstepping their bounds and not staying in their lane. What do you say about that, Chris? So okay, so let me ask you a question. So do you feel that these people are putting their own

views, their own philosophies, they're putting them out there to these students when really at the end of the day, you shouldn't be putting your own personal views and your own philosophies onto these students. Look, I make it Chris, absolutely. I'll make it even simpler for you, Chris. Until you get our kids grades up, until you get their test scores up, until the outcomes at the end of every school year are better than they are today, why don't you just pair back all the extra stuff you do? Like we're pouring a lot of money across the country into public education and we are not getting the results that we as a G7 country

in a competitive intellectual battle with countries like China, we're not getting the results we need to compete in the future economy. So let's get back to the things that you should be doing before we start looking at the stuff you want to be doing. That's my perspective, Chris. Yeah.

And really at the end of the day, everybody's going to have an opinion and every, and the great thing about living in Canada is you can have your opinion. That's fine. But sometimes you need to keep your opinion to yourself and not put that onto others. Chris, I wanna thank you for your call. And I invite others to call into the Ben Mulroney show. The phone lines are open.

This shouldn't be a left or right or conservative or liberal idea. This should be about the status and the state of our education system, how much money we're putting into it, and what we're getting out on the other end. And right now, I know because we've covered the news today, there is a boatload of money that is about to be served up to the public education system in the province of Ontario. And meanwhile, the test scores at the end are not indicating that money is being well spent.

So before we start having a debate over whether a book is appropriate or not, or should be in there, how about we, we trim that stuff down. We, we, and we stick to the basics because we're not nailing the basics. We are failing our children on the basics. Before a teacher starts saying, oh, I'd like to have a book in there that exposes my kids to X, Y, or Zed. How about you spend that time working on a lesson plan that leads to higher grades and better outcomes?

And lastly, I'll say, as a parent, I want the right to decide what my kid is exposed to as it relates to interpersonal relationships. I want to talk to my kids about issues that may be touchy subjects, issues that may require a deft hand, issues that may require a longer conversation with me quietly at home. I don't think that that that a teacher who has a particular worldview needs to be sharing that worldview unless you are certain that everybody in the class is getting a calm that may be naive that may be too simple of you. But I'm sort of trying to make a point. David, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. I just hear a point, Ben. I think all teacher salaries should be tied

to performance-based numbers. Well, I mean, I think- You're absolutely right. Yeah, listen, I think that's a little, it's a little too binary for me. I think there are a lot of factors that go into whether a child succeeds or not. And, and, and, and, you know, class size,

the resources available to a teacher that there's any number of, of issues that could lead kids in on any given date, either succeed or fail. I don't think it's entirely fair to put it on, on, I think performance reviews are essential and, and having those discussions as to how a teacher can improve Absolutely, but to go so far as to say your livelihood is going to depend on whether or not all the kids succeed It's to me personally. That's that's a little that's a bridge too far. I should be tied to It should be tied to any potential wage increases. It should be performance based. As far as the library material goes, this is nothing more than a social engineering plan.

And of course this is, you know, there is a substrata, like you said, there is a vein that runs through all these school boards. You see it. You can see videos about it every day. Currents trying to fight this very issue in public forums and they get completely chastised for it. You can see videos about it every day. Parents trying to fight this very issue. Yeah. And in public forums and they get completely chastised for it. Yeah. It's courted out by police and it's disgusting. Like when are people gonna say enough is enough already? Like

Yeah, well, I think the Alberta government is saying just that. David, thank you very much. Nick, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. You say this is not just a school problem. No, but I think it's more, I'm a new parent. I'm going to have a newborn coming soon. Congratulations. Enjoy the ride, my friend. I hope you got enough sleep in the years prior because you ain't getting any anytime soon.

I think it's exciting. I think we're just too busy as a society as parents. Luckily, mine aren't in school yet, but I think that, you know, with everything getting so expensive, people having to work two jobs, it's hard to keep tabs on our children. And unfortunately, there's other things that are keeping them busy, like cell phones or tablets, let's say, that are ruining their education and their kind of mental focus as they grow up. But I see I don't think those two things are linked. Just because a parent is busy doesn't mean that has nothing to do with an activist teacher or group that may want to put a book in the library that simply doesn't belong there.

Those two things aren't related. You can be a very busy. And this is, one is a parent trying to do their best to provide for their family and their kids. And the other is a teacher or an organization not sticking to their lane. And so anyway, I've got time for one more call. So I thank you for that, Nick.

And now we welcome Mick into the conversation. Hey Ben, how are you today? I'm well, thank you. All right, so here's- Give it to me in about 30 seconds, my friend. My estimation, Toronto Public Library, all public libraries, put whatever book you want in, as long as it qualifies.

School system, keep everything that is traditionally inflammatory out. I don't need a school telling my children what traditional politics are or what social engineering is. Yeah, the primacy of the parent is full stop. Like I'm the parent and that is more important on the totem pole than a teacher's opinion on my kid. The My Choice sales event is back at Nissan and the choice is yours. Choose our best selling rogue always ready for adventure or the dynamic centra packed with safety features or the all new boldly redesigned kicks. And now during my choice you can choose up to $1,500 in Nissan bonus

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