Danielle Smith’s Alberta government is taking aim at what books are allowed on the shelves of school libraries in the province.
Today, Minister of Education and Childcare Demetrios Nicolaides announced a public feedback process around what he called “extremely graphic and age-inappropriate content” in K-12 school library books.
Among the four books singled out by the government as containing examples of such content are a trio of award-winning graphic novels featuring LGBTQ2S+ themes: Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Mike Curato’s Flamer.
“As a parent, it is extremely concerning to me to find out that books explicitly depicting sexual acts are available to students in some school libraries. We are going to do something about this serious issue by consulting Albertans and creating standards to ensure students do not have access to age-inappropriate materials in school libraries,” Nicolaides said in a press release.
During a press conference Monday, Nicolaides denied that the government’s initiative is about creating a book ban, though he told reporters that “our intent is that extreme offenders—like the ones we’ve identified—do not make their way into school libraries.”
School libraries have become ground zero for anti-LGBTQ2S+ censorship, particularly across the U.S. American conservative organizations like Moms for Liberty have gone on national crusades to have books depicting even the tamest of LGBTQ2S+ experiences banned.
Smith’s government has already led the way on anti-LGBTQ2S+ policy in Canada, introducing some of the country’s most restrictive anti-trans policies to date last year. Now Alberta’s policymakers have turned their attention to libraries. The government is inviting Albertans to provide input on what they believe is acceptable for school library collections through an online survey open through June 6. The new standards developed through this process will be mandated for school boards to implement by the start of the 2025-26 school year.
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