The Current - Library budget cuts highlight divisions in an Alberta town

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

A small town in Alberta is split over budget cuts to a public library, with some residents saying those cuts are motivated by opposition to a Gay-Straight Alliance that holds meetings there. The Fifth Estate went to Valleyview, Alta., to investigate. 

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This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, it's Matt here. Thanks for listening to The Current wherever you're getting this podcast. Before we get to today's show, wonder if I might ask a favor of you if you could hit the follow button on whatever app you're using. There is a lot of news that's out there these days. We're trying to help you make sense of it all and give you a bit of a break from some

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with your daily life stuff, right? So you think, oh, that can't be true, that sounds too crazy. But yet here we are, even in a little Valleview, people seem to be taking agendas with things and we're kind of forgetting to be human beings and we're kind of just running with the biggest stick we can find is how it is. That's Ken Hodl. He runs the local garage in Valley View, Alberta and those agendas he's talking about

are dividing this small town just east of Grand Prairie. It all started with budget cuts at the local library. What a better way to try to get your way than to once again call us all a bunch of homophobics and you know that that's that's the reason that's being cut. I don't believe that at all. For people like Rod Perrin who runs a trucking business the fight over the Valley View Library is purely about money. But when our colleagues at the Fifth Estate looked into it they found a much more complicated story. It is the kind of fight that is happening in towns all over Alberta and right across Canada.

Mark Kelly is cohost of the Fifth Estate. He's with Mead Studio. Mark, good morning. Good morning, Matt. Take us to Valley View. Describe this town for us. It's kind of town, Matt, that we're driving four hours north of Edmonton.

If you didn't see the, the exit sign on the side of the highway, you would just drive right past it. 1800 people hasn't changed over the years in terms of the makeup of the town, but it has changed in terms of sort of the feeling in that town. 1800 people, as I mentioned, one main strip. And we were contacted by a viewer who was saying that there's this battle over a library and the fifth estate's not going to deploy itself into a community this far from everything

over the future of a library. But it wasn't the what, Matt, that really intrigued us. It was the why. Here's a town that doesn't have any local media, the local newspaper shut down during the pandemic, and we were curious to know what was going on. I'm skeptical. Could a little public library be tearing a town apart? Could that be? And as we spoke to more people before we arrived in Valais-Vie, we realized that that was what was going on in this town, but we just wanted to dig in. We wanted to unravel that story.

This is the beauty of journalism and it's why we go to these places to find out why are they defunding this library and why is this tearing this little town apart? So tell me more about this. I mean, in these small towns right across the country and there will be a local library, can be a hub for any number of things,

including the place where you go and get books. When did the library start to become a battleground in this town? Yeah, it started back in 2023. And you're right, this is a community hub on Main Street. It's a fixture on Main Street. This library has been there since 1970, and it is the hub. It's a place where seniors can go,

and there are programs for seniors for new Canadians. They've got desktop computers there for people in town who don't have internet in their own homes. And it's a place where you get story time for kids. And it's always been this institution in Valley View. Why then could that be in any way controversial? Well, that was the story that when we started to

look into that, that what's going on in that library as well also is you've got something called a gay straight alliance. And that's a program for kids, gay or straight, to come together after school. Now in many places you can do a GSA at school, but you couldn't do it in this town. They wouldn't accept to have a GSA group in their school.

So the library said you can come and meet here, an after-school program. And that's where things started getting interesting, as we started looking about what could be controversial about that. There were storm clouds that started to come on the horizon when we spoke to librarian Liz Griffiths-Garcia, and she said when people started showing up, just their community engagement meetings, that's when she realized something was up.

We had a couple of people come into our community engagement night and they came in and they sat down and said, it's a travesty that you're overfunded. There's no value in the programs you provide. We were told we should be a repository for books. And that is all. So what happened after that? Well, it was out of the blue right before the end of 2023 that the library is told by town council

that they would be, the town would be reducing its funding in the library by 50%. They were told the decision has been made, no debate, defunding of the library. And that meant they'd have to immediately lay off one library and other financial repercussions, but they were in shock and, and, and taken, taken aback.

Um, so they started doing some detective work, some whispers, but why could this be? Because no other department in the community had faced a budget cut like this. And they just wanted to know why us, why, as, as the librarian would say to us, we felt like a target, but why? Tell me about this teenager, Theo Robertson, and how Theo Robertson enters into this story. This is a pivot point in the story, Matt, and it's incredible how one individual could have impact.

But when you're in a small town like this, one individual can make a difference. Theo, 17 years old, articulate, engaging, outspoken, a proud defender of the library. Theo also happens to be transgender. Regular user of the library, Theo is the person who set up the Gay Straight Alliance at the library and this is how Theo describes that group. It's sort of like a youth group with the underlying like notion that we are accepting and that we love everybody. And they already identify as LGBT and we just

provide a space for them to be and to exist. So what was Theo hearing? You say this is a pivot point in the story. What was Theo hearing about why people seem to have issues with this group? Well, as I mentioned that the GSA was not welcome at the local school Finds a haven and a refuge in a safe space in in in the library and just think about this for a second I mean you're 17 year old you're a transgender. You've got other you're a transgender, you've got other gay kids in this small rural town. You understand the importance of having a safe space in a place like a library. But that also can attract some unwanted attention.

Some of the taxpayers are saying, what exactly is our tax money paying for? So that's when Theo started getting and being told by people on the street about what they thought about this GSA in the school, in the library. Just implying that we are taking this funding and creating a program which indoctrinates youth or which tells them things which are untrue or that encourages them to have sex underage or that promotes pedophilia, entirely promoting these misconceptions that they have about gay people and about trans people. So you mentioned that the library budget was cut.

There's a decision to do that. What did council say about why that was happening? Well we were given, there was an emergency meeting at the library board with one of the town councillors to ask those questions and we were given a recording of that meeting and it was incredible just how heated it was saying, this makes no sense. The councillor was saying, look, well, we've got budgetary issues,

but as I mentioned, no other department in the community faced a budget cut of 50% like this. So we tried to talk members of the council and the members of the library board before we went to Valley View and then we planned our trip there and shortly before and this is another pivot point in the story Matt, shortly before we go there the town council has a meeting behind closed doors and they pass a motion that says

the mayor nor any of the councillors will be allowed to speak to the media. This is a motion saying they couldn't talk. A motion. So this is a binding motion that prevents them from talking to the media. But my point again, there's no other media in this community. So by the media, they met the fifth estate. And it also says to the, in an unofficial way, says to the librarians in town, as well as library board members, that they would, uh, they, they would endanger their professional future if they were to speak to us. So we, we found that we were shut out. They were, the town was basically muzzled when it came

to talking about what was going on here. So those are the official voices. Presumably not everybody in the town is muzzled. Um, what did you hear from other people? Yeah. And that's where the digging begins and that's where the fun begins. When you're a journalist. I mean, the town is definitely divided. We met two people who really illustrate that. First is Travis Worklin. He's a lifelong Valley View resident and he wears his heart on his sleeve. He owns a local

coffee shop called Tall Timbers. He's the vice president of the Chamber of Commerce. He also happens to be gay and he's been involved in the town's pride celebrations. He's also another fierce defender of the library. And when we talked to him, Travis told us he isn't buying this idea that this is a financial issue, that somehow taking $60,000 out of the library budget is necessary to help a town that has a operating budget of $11 million a year. He thinks there's a political agenda at play here,

targeting the library and some of the people who use it. Presumably not everybody believes that in town because people always have different opinions. If Travis is on one side of the debate, who's on the other? Well, this is the thing, we wanted to get that voice of the community. And in town, or just outside of town,

you've got this big tower, It's called Taking Back Alberta. It says it on it, and it's in a farmer's field. We want to know who the heck put this tower up. It's a guy named Rod Parent. He owns a trucking business in town, born and raised in Valley View. He took me to the middle of his field to show us this big tower that he's taking back Alberta and freedom says on it. He says the decision on the library's budget was strictly about money and wasn't designed

to discriminate against anyone. The gay thing, it's just like if you're not out there dancing on the street with them, well then they're saying that there's something wrong with you. I don't feel that they're discriminated at in our town. Maybe they just need to focus on something different and they probably fit in just fine. I should say too when I was asking Rod about the future of the library and he said yeah I'm well aware of it I said in all your years and he was just in his

late 60s have you ever set foot in the library? Rod just curious. No, never in my life. Hi there, listeners. Steve Patterson here, host of The Debaters. It's a CBC comedy podcast where my fellow comedians debate hard-hitting topics like butter versus margarine or are long weekends overrated, and I try to moderate them, though not as moderately as most moderators do. Anyway, our live audience picks the winner using the highest technology we have available, human applause.

So if you're not afraid of a few painful puns, then we'll be like two peas in a podcast. Our live audience picks the winner using the highest technology we have available, human applause. So if you're not afraid of a few painful puns, then we'll be like two peas in a podcast. You can hear the debaters on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. How does all of this sit with the young people in town who use that library? Well, your pivot points, Matt, and then you've got your tugging on the heartstrings. And as I mentioned, for the young people that were using this GSA, this Gay-Straight Alliance program, and it's so important for them to find their identity, find their place, and to find a community.

It's a community within a community. So they're worried about the library shutting down. They're worried about losing their spot to me. And when we were there, there was talk of opening a library inside a school that's soon to be built. And here's what a team named Jasmine told me about what she'd say to people who want to close down the town library. I think if they could just like understand what it means to the community and everyone

who uses the library, this space is definitely better than school because there's several teachers who have expressed their opinion. They're very against queer people and make comments about how it's weird or unnatural. It makes me feel like maybe this isn't who I'm supposed to be. Like maybe I have to change myself because it's wrong. And this is the important part to remind people, this isn't about books, the kind of books you have in the library.

This isn't about just the programs you have in libraries. This is about people. And this is fundamentally what this battle over this library comes down to, it's about people and their place in the community. You looked at this as a broader issue. How does, and we talked about this on the sign, how does this group, Take Back Alberta,

fit into the broader story of what's going on in this one town in Valley View? Yeah, I mean, this isn't happening in a vacuum. There's a broader activist movement that seems to be at work here. I mentioned this Take Back Alberta, this big tower that they have outside of town, and it's a grassroots political movement,

a social conservative movement. And they're taking their fight to towns across the province, run by a man named David Parker about bringing Alberta back to its core values and focusing on things like libraries and what's going on in libraries. Who is he? Who's David Parker?

He's the de facto leader of Take Back Alberta. He's a long time conservative political staffer who's always been in, in sort of in the shadows of these groups, but now he's stepped out in front. He, he's worried about what he sees as radical communist ideologues that are taking over places like local library boards, town councils, school boards, promoting the idea about gender identity, flying pride flags or rainbow crosswalks. And they say what they call this radical ideology has to stop.

So they want to encourage people who are like-minded social conservatives to get active and to get involved in politics. And never mind the provincial or federal level, go for the low-hanging fruit of democracy. So run for your school board, run for the library board, get yourself involved at the grassroots and that's where you're able to make a difference. And so you wanted to talk to David Parker, obviously. Madam, what did he tell you?

Yeah, we found him at the annual general meeting of the United Conservative Party, the governing party in Alberta. And he being proud that to take back Alberta helped turf out premier Jason Kennedy. You'll remember when he brought in maxine vaccine mandates, TBA said he's got to go. And they were influential in getting him tossed out of office, influential in bringing premier Daniel Smith into office.

Um, so he's got very strong feelings about the future and being a watchdog to hold politicians accountable. And then I asked him what he thought about libraries. I mean obviously I love libraries, I love books. I mean I think everybody should have access to libraries. Do I think that libraries should be having drag shows in them? Absolutely not. I think the sexualization of children is part of a cultural movement.

It's a sexual ideology but it's just all part of DEI. It's all part of a cultural movement. It's a sexual ideology, but it's just all part of DEI. It's all part of this communist movement. So what needs to be done then with, for example, libraries? We just need to make them libraries again. Which means? People go and get books. Do you see Take Back Alberta as being a divisive force in this province?

I mean, obviously there's propaganda around us. There's all kinds of statements that people make about what we are. I don't feel that we are to this. We're pushing what we believe to be right. Take Back Alberta isn't the only group that's doing this sort of thing. You went to a workshop. Tell me a little bit about the workshop and the goal of those workshops.

What these workshops do, and as I say with Take Back Alberta, there's encouraging people who have never been involved in politics to get involved in politics, local politics. So we went to a workshop run by a group called parents for choice in education. Now it's this workshop was closed to journalists. We sent in someone with a hidden camera and what their goal to do is to teach people what their messaging should be.

If they want to run for these local offices, if you want to run for a school board. Like politics bootcamp or something. Exactly. That's exactly what it is. Educate would be candidates for town council. Talk about, you know, you may have a lot of beliefs.

This is what the, the instructors telling people, but we should focus on parental rights and protecting kids. These are the buzzwords that you need to be, and that's going to get you elected. They show the audience a graphic, the attendees, this meeting that our journalist was at, with a big Venn diagram with two overlapping circles.

You see the big green bubble there? That's all the things you want to do. This is what you got into politics for. This is the stuff you believe in. Now you see this tiny little dot in the middle? That's the things that you can talk about. When I say for the most part shut that back up, I mean it. So there's this idea of a I don't care what you believe but don't don't say it out loud less is more but in the meeting too there you know there was a lot of talk about this idea of, I don't care what you believe, but don't say it out loud. Less is more. But

in the meeting, too, there was a lot of talk about conspiracies, a global cabal led by George Soros in the United Nations. The instructor supported this belief and said, yes, that's why you've got to get involved, because you've got to stop these movements from happening. You got in touch with this instructor. What did the instructor tell you? Yeah, he said in a statement, the organization promotes a parent's right to choose how their child is educated and to run for public office. And if anyone, this is a quote,

if anyone has a right to determine what content children were exposed to, whether sexual, ideological or otherwise, it is the parents of those children, end quote. What do you know about how movements like this would connect back to what we were talking about in Valley View? Well, they're making headway in communities across Alberta. And there are people in town with direct ties to take back Alberta.

People, library supporters feel are at the heart of the attack to, on this library to defund it, to close it. And as I mentioned, there's the tower with the slogan on it in the middle of the canola field. And one of the town councillors, Samantha Stanky, has been seen as a person advocating for this agenda. And she was sitting there at that UCP meeting where we met David Parker. Samantha Stanky from this little community also happens to be sitting on the board of the UCP. Her candidacy was endorsed by Take Back Alberta.

She's from a prominent local political family in Valley View. And we know that she's had a strong influence on the future of this library. What, sorry, you were about to say? I was going to say we reached out to her for comment but like all the others she refused to speak to us. Well I was just going to say what do we know about what kind of pressure these activists are putting on libraries? I mean again you said and I said in the introduction this isn't just in Valley View, it's not just in Alberta but it's across the country. Yeah, we spoke to a librarian in Airdrie, Airdrie, Alberta, just north of Calgary,

named Kelly Lawson. She's part of a Canada-wide committee that's tracking this sort of thing. And one measure about what's going on with the libraries is how often people are trying to ban books. They're called book challenges. They're seeing roughly four times as many challenges as there were on average pre-pandemic. And it's not like it as many challenges as there were at on average pre

pandemic. And it's not like it used to be the people were challenging books often about racism, about cultural portrayal, but now the issues about the books people want banned tend to be LLGBTQ gender identity themes. At Kelly's library, she's frequently finding books that people object to that have been

dumped into the toilet. And just at least one uplifting part, she says, at least for all those books that people object to that are being dumped into the toilet. And just at least one uplifting part, she says, at least for all those books that are being dumped in the toilet, she's sure to reorder them to make sure that they still have a place in the shelves of her library. Just before I let you go, where do things stand in Valley View? Where we started? Well, the town remains divided and it looks like the library is going to be shut down. Just last week, we were told that there was an emergency meeting of the town council and they've decided in a vote 5-4, they appointed an extra councillor to break a tie that they would close the public library and reopen

it later sometime in a school that's soon to be built. And remember Ken, the guy who owns the garage, he's Theo's grandfather, and he's worried about Theo staying safe in all this divisive debate. She's out there and she's saying stuff that they don't want to hear. Things don't always go perfect with being born as you are, so things have to change. Everything she's doing takes so much courage, like way more courage or strength than I as an individual or anyone that I know of could do. Theo meanwhile thinks about the future very differently now.

I used to think that maybe after I was educated and I had seen the world that I would come back here. Now I don't ever feel like that. I can't even bear to think about how hard it's going to be to change things now. Mark, we will watch for more of this on the 5th tonight. Thank you very much. Thanks, Matt. Mark Kelly, co-host of the 5th Estate Full Investigation airs tonight, CBC Television and CBC Gem, 9 p.m., 9.30 in Newfoundland.

And you can watch it on YouTube as of this afternoon.