The Current - Alberta shelves school book ban — for now

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Librarians are relieved the province has paused its order to remove sexually-explicit titles, which swept up Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, but some parents say some books need to be banned and the government should act. John Hilton-O'Brien , Executive Director of Parents for Choice in EducationLaura Winton, board member of Library Association of Alberta, join host Matt Galloway.

We're in the midst of the dog days of summer. And it's called that because during this period, Sirius, the dog star, rises with the sun in the morning. Not because it feels like several dogs are breathing their humid breath on you all the time. Can you tell he's a cat person? Hello, I'm Neil Kerkstel. And I'm Chris Houghton. We're the co-hosts of As It Happens.

But throughout the summer, some of our wonderful colleagues will be hosting in our place. We will still be bringing you conversations with people at the center of the day's major news stories here in Canada and throughout the world. You can listen to As It Happens wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Well, as you've been hearing, Alberta's order to pull books with sexual content from school libraries is being shelved for now. The change comes after the Edmonton Public School Board said it would remove more than 200 books from its libraries, books including The Handmaid's Tale.

Margaret Atwood pushed back in her Margaret Atwood way, posting a widely shared satirical story on social media. And so, after days of international attention and in some quarters ridicule, yesterday the Alberta government paused the order and is promising revised rules that will keep the classics in libraries and, in Premier Daniel Smith's words, take pornographic images out. John Hilton O'Brien is Executive Director of Parents for Choice in Education. This is an Alberta-based not-for-profit advocacy organization. It supported the original order. He's in our Calgary Studio. And Laura Winton is on the board of the Library Association of Alberta. She is also the vice chair and Alberta representative of the Canadian Federation of Library Associations.

And she is in Edmonton. Good morning to you both. Hi there. Thanks for having us. Thanks for being here. John, you had helped call for this order from the Alberta government. Now there's a pause. Do you feel let down?

Not at all. Why? Look, the Alberta government stepped in because parents found sexually explicit materials in school libraries, material no reasonable person thinks belongs in front of kids. They issued guidelines, not bans, saying take the sexually explicit images out of your libraries, and they offered guidelines. EPSB, the Edmonton Public School Board, chose to interpret this. with a bit of malicious compliance. They said, oh, sure we will, but we're also going to pull the Great Gatsby. And, you know, that's just not on.

The Alberta government is pausing, just like a parent does when a child chooses to willfully misinterpret them so they can be more explicit and say, no, you do this. So I'm glad to see the Alberta government will be more clear. And I'm glad to see that they'll do their best to make sure that libraries will make sure classic works of literature are left on the shelves while they still protect kids. I'm going to come back to some of the things you said in just a moment. Laura, the premier, Daniel Smith, I mean, in some ways using the language that John has used there, said that what the Edmonton School Board had done was vicious compliance.

The Edmonton School Board said that it was removing material with explicit sexual content. That included The Handmaid's Tale. Also, Brave New World, Jaws, the Great Gatsby. books by Judy Blume. What did you think of that? Is that malicious or vicious compliance? In my opinion, the Edmonton School Board with very little time and very little resources did the best that they could to comply with a confusing and unclear ministerial order. You know, John is saying that that order really just addressed images and books. That's absolutely not true. The order spoke of images and texts. It was very explicit about any sort of explicit sexual content being removed, and frankly, all of those titles and including many, many classics, absolutely include sexually explicit materials because they deal with difficult and controversial topics, including sexuality. Do you think the Edmonton School Board maybe was also trying to prove a point here saying that it's a bit difficult to determine, I mean, books that acknowledge the existence of sex are one thing, but it's difficult to.

determine whether that is or it's not appropriate in a school library. Yeah, I mean, the position of the Library Association of Alberta and certainly the Canadian Federation of Library Associations as well is that these are complex questions and that's why we have trained, educated teachers and librarians who are in schools, writing policies, thinking carefully about this and making those selections. This has always been a role for professionals and it is not a role for government and it's not a role for, you know, parental advocacy groups. John, you had said that what the Alberta and Edmonton School Board did in particular

was leading toward, in your words, book burning roulette. So just to be clear, do you think that books like The Handmaid's Tale and Brave New World should be pulled from school shelves? Certainly not, and it's not even implied in the ministerial order. One of the things I'd like to address here is the claim that only professionals such as librarians should decide what goes on those shelves. But here's the issue, Matt. Real professionals don't override the people they serve. Their role is to inform parents and politicians, not to impose personal values. That's part of what professionalism means. Professionals advise, not decide,

the moment that librarians decide to replace parents, they've crossed the lines. I mean, it's interesting. But it's interesting. Before the Alberta government put forward this order. They had done a survey to parents in Alberta. And the survey showed in part that one of the questions was, have you ever been concerned about a book in a school library being inappropriate for a certain age group due to sexually explicit content? 60% of those responded. One of the other questions was, how supportive are you of the government of Alberta setting consistent requirements for school boards in terms of how they select and manage a school library? 46%, the majority said they're not at all supportive.

What does that tell you? What that tells me is that they didn't know what was in the libraries. Neither did the minister. We actually had a large team of volunteers working for months and months and months cataloging to show actual call numbers that, yes, these books really are in schools because nobody could believe it. But if 60% of the people surveyed by the government itself say that they aren't concerned about that material, that suggests that, I mean, is there actually an issue here? Yes, and the reason that so many people were concerned, over 40%,

is that those people had an inkling that there was a problem. The rest of us really didn't. Well, it was 31% said that they were concerned. What are you concerned about? What are you afraid that children will read and see? Well, look, I am holding in my hands right now a journal article from child abuse and neglect. And what it explains is that kids and teens exposed to sexual content are one and a half times as likely to develop problematic sexual behaviors. Now, the books

that the government of Alberta is particularly interested in are not innocent novels. These are not coming of age stories. We're looking at graphic novels with clear depictions of sexual organs going into orifices, and those orifices belong to children. They're right to be concerned. We had no idea this was going on in our school libraries. Have you read these books? I have. You yourself have read the books? Unfortunately, yes. Laura, what do you make of what John has just said? Well, you know, I would disagree with what John. I have also read all these books. In fact, so has school library journal publishers weekly and reverect. views of these books from those sources, for example, Blanket says Thompson manages to explore

adolescent social yearnings, the power of young love, and the complexities of sexual attraction with a rare combination of sincerity, pictorial lyricism, and taste. These books are not pornography. These are works of literature that are coming-of-age stories, and frankly, it's fairly difficult to tell a coming-of-age story without dealing with the topic of sexuality. That's a huge issue that teens are grappling with and struggling with. I think it's also worth noting that, you know, librarians absolutely agree that parents have an incredibly important role in helping their children decide what to read. Individual parents have the right to decide on their children's reading, but they do not have the right to oppose it on everyone else. And when we're lobbying and seeing

governments put together policies that remove wholesale large amounts of material from collections, or frankly, even small amounts of materials from collections, that's what has. what's happening. The rights of parents and children are being violated. I am absolutely a librarian and I'm professionally passionate about this. I'm also the mother of an eight-year-old, a six-year-old, and I've got a third on the way. I'm equally passionate about this as a parent. So this is not a one-sided story where librarians are fighting parents on this. Librarians and educators are parents. And as that survey showed, the vast majority of them feel that decisions about what ends up on school shelves should be made by educators, by librarians, and by school administrators.

The government is rewarding this order. What will you be looking for, Laura? Well, I mean, what I've heard from the Premier when she's talked about rewording is that they're looking to target pornographic images now. This is, I mean, not particularly less concerning for us. It is still an explicit act of sense. censorship, which is not something we ever want to see in our children's schools. I think the other thing that we need to think about is, you know, the parents for choice in education and the minister and the premier have been, have said along the way many times that these four titles in particular qualify as pornography. And that's just not true by the very definition of pornography.

we're talking about once again award-winning coming-of-age graphic novels that absolutely have a few pages in them where there is some sexual content that is, that content is presented in the context of a rich story of a child grappling with sexuality. It is not an image of nudity that is intended to arouse,

which is the definition of pornography. Canada, a place which is a country, country and a nation. Is that what you spent the whole day doing, Chris? I'm trying to make a grand statement. It's not working, is it? Hi, I'm Chris Howden. And I'm Neil Kirkcal.

Listen, you can relax, Chris. As it happens, in case you've forgotten, has been on for more than 50 years. That is true. And you and I will be away for a part of this summer. But as it happens, we'll still be on with some fantastic guest hosts filling in. And the show will still be sharing stories from Canada and the rest of the world. You can listen to As It Happens wherever you get your podcast. What should schools do with a title like that, if it has those sorts of images in it, though?

Well, I think what schools should do and what schools have been doing is cataloged them in the appropriate collections. So blankets, genderqueer, Flamer, and Funhouse are their wonderful titles. They're certainly, they shouldn't be on shelves in K-to-6 schools. And the minister's own list of schools shows that they're not on shelves in K-to-6 schools. Some of them, like Flamer, which can be. be classified as a juvenile novel is in schools that run up to grade nine, and a couple of the other ones, we're seeing them in high school collections. So that's where they belong. They belong in those areas where teenagers of the appropriate ages are going to be able to access

them. And frankly, if parents have concerns, schools also have processes in place where parents can bring those concerns forward and see that material moved if it is, for some reason, misclassified in the wrong area. John, would you be comfortable in having those books? Again, your organization proposed a list of the books that you said you were concerned about for the government to remove. Would you be comfortable in having those books shelved in secondary schools, in libraries there, with access to older students? What my correspondent neglected to mention is that the libraries that were holding these books were K-9 schools that included elementary schools. And the fact is that the study I'm holding shows that children and teens exposed to such material are one or a half times as likely to find themselves with problematic sexual behavior. So would you be comfortable in having those books accessible to secondary school students in a high school library?

No, I don't think any parent would. As soon as you put those books into the library, you're giving. them to children and you're taking away the right of parents to say, I'm not going to provide that to my child. They're the people who are insisting on deciding who gets this. And this is not censorship. School libraries are small. You don't have the whole library of Congress in your local high school library. But you are making intentional decisions as to what is and is not there. I mean, you said that this isn't a ban. But in saying that no student has access to these books. Is that not by default a ban?

No, these are guidelines. The government of Canada has also for almost as long, well, perhaps as long as we've been a country, has also said there are certain books you aren't going to publish at all, right? We're not going to publish certain kinds of pornography, for instance. We just want to allow it. We're not talking about publishing. We're talking about access to books in a library. And if you say, and what the government has said is that all, all books with sexually explicit content, that that access to all of those books would be eliminated for students in all grades. By definition, is that not a ban? No, this is about selection.

These were guidelines, and they said, be mindful of the age appropriateness of what you put in front of students. Now, librarians have no special expertise in this area. My correspondent is not a specialist in developmental psychology, nor is she licensed to practice psychotherapy, nor is almost any librarian. I apologize for interrupting, but who should then? If you believe that librarians are not qualified, who should decide what kids read and what specific content that may, as we say, acknowledge the existence of sex, is age appropriate? it. The people who ultimately have to decide that are the parents. And librarians at the end of the day, Matt, are not elected. The government is elected by those parents. And isn't accountability the real issue here? And so what would the threshold? Just finally on that, what would the threshold be? How if you had parents who said, we don't like this book or we don't like that book, that would be enough to have that book removed from a school library? The government's basic idea is the right one. We should have some criteria. All of these arguments are about saying we should have explicit images in libraries.

There's been a whole lot of excuses made for that today. And that's an objective line that we probably shouldn't cross. we should not have pictures of sexual organs entering children in our libraries in any school, full stop. Laura, what role – and I'm not sure whether there are images of what John has described, sexual organs entering the orifices of children in these books. But what role should parents have in determining what is in a library? Well, I mean, I think parents should have the role that they can. currently have, which is that, you know, I as a librarian would absolutely encourage parents

to be involved in what their children are reading, to ask about that, to take a look at what comes home from school with them. If they have concerns about the materials that they're seeing on their school library shelves, they should go speak to their principals and teachers, use the processes and the reconsideration of library material processes that are already in place at schools to have those robust discussions. But once again, you know, I certainly don't claim to be a psychologist here, but neither are most parents. And so, and certainly neither is Daniel Smith or Minister Nicolades. And so, you know, I don't think that's the threshold here. And the answer is not to wholesale take away resources. We've seen the government attempt that. Part of the reason

it doesn't work is because coming up with very clear guidelines on exactly what can and can't go in a library is really difficult. It's confusing. They didn't get the result they wanted and now they're going to try again. And really the answer here is to leave this work to professionals who absolutely are trained in how to evaluate material for age and developmental appropriateness and make decisions about where that material ends up in a library. I think it's also important to note that, you know, yes, K-to-12 libraries contain material for children and material for teens, it's not altogether. There is a picture book collection, there is a juvenile collection, there are separate graphic novel collections in lots of cases, and there are high school and teen collections. And certainly no kindergarten teacher is taking their children into those teen collections.

They are in separate spaces for a reason. John, do you worry at all? We just have a couple of minutes left. Do you worry, books can be life-changing things. Do you worry that in not having access to books that might be about something that kids are going through, that something can be lost if they don't see themselves in those books and they don't have access to those books? Well, we've been able to do coming of age stories for millennia without graphic depictions of sexuality. And I think it's reasonable for us to give resources for parents.

and tell them if you'd like to go a little further, why don't you have a look at those? Perhaps we could have a section for parents in the library where they can take things out. That would seem more reasonable. But I'm sitting in a city mat where the average man, woman, child, and dog has two years of post-secondary, and it goes up to three years if you take out the dogs. I'm being literal here. 40% of Calgary's adults have a bachelor's degree or higher. That means almost two-thirds of family units have someone with a bachelor's degree in the family.

Any suggestion that parents lack the education necessary to decide what their children should read is simply fatuous. Laura, just last word to you, we just have a few seconds left. What are you worried about in terms of, as I said, access to books that books can change kids' lives? If those books aren't available on the library shelf, what are you concerned about? I mean, I'm hugely concerned that children are going to have limited access to stories that can help them understand themselves and the world around them, that can help them grapple with the difficult topics that they're trying to figure out and sort through as they develop their identities. You know, again, I'm a parent myself and I want to make. sure that my children have access to a wide breadth of information. It is a fundamental pillar

of democracy that we all have that. And my children have a right to that as well. It's good to speak with you both about this. Thank you very much. Thank you, Matt. Lord Whinton is on the board of the Library Association of Canada. John Hilton O'Brien is Executive Director of Parents for Choice in Education. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.