Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speaks during a press conference during a meeting of premiers in Toronto on Dec. 16, 2024. Geoff Robins/AFP via Getty Images
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said that Edmonton Public Schools engaged in “vicious compliance” after a list of books to be removed from public school libraries was released and included books such as Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
The Alberta government announced in May that it would require school boards to remove books that had been identified as “inappropriate,” containing graphic content on topics like sexual activity, nudity, and molestation. Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides signed a ministerial order with guidelines in July.
Edmonton Public Schools’ board released a list, distributed internally, of more than 200 books it would be removing from its shelves to comply with the directive. The list was leaked and shared online on Aug. 28. The division verified the list on Aug. 30, saying anyone who was concerned about the list should contact the education minister.
Smith said the school board may need some support in understanding the directive.
“We ask school boards to use their discretion to identify books that might not be age appropriate for elementary school children, and Edmonton Public is clearly doing a little vicious compliance over what the direction is,” she said during an unrelated news conference on Aug. 29.
She said that if the school board needed the provincial government to “hold their hand through the process” to identify the type of materials that were appropriate for students, the government would “happily work with them to work through their list one by one, so we can be super clear about what it is we’re trying to do.”
Smith said the goal of the ministerial directive was to “take sexually explicit content out of elementary schools.”
She shared images of the content the government received from concerned parents, noting that it was the kind of explicit images that would get banned from social media and could not be broadcast on the news “without probably facing some kind of Broadcast Standards Council complaint.” She also invited school trustees to look at the material.
“We have tried to be … polite about this, so that people understand what it is,” Smith added. “This all began because these were the images that parents were showing us that were accessible to children in elementary school libraries.”
The school board said it had heard concerns from families and community members over the list of books it intends to remove.
“The Board of Trustees agrees with these concerns and voiced our opposition to the provincial changes before the Ministerial Order was issued,” it said in an Aug. 29 statement.
The board said division staff had worked over the summer to “ensure that only books that directly met the criteria in the Ministerial Order were added to the Division’s removal list.”
It added that anyone who had a concern about a book being removed, or the criteria for book removal, should contact the education minister directly.
Canadian author Margaret Atwood noted on social media that her book had been put on the list.
“Hi kids .. #HandmaidsTale (the book not the series!) has just been banned in #Edmonton…don’t read it, your hair will catch on fire!” the author said in an Aug. 29 post on X.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association said it was “sounding the alarm” over the government of Alberta’s decision. The association added that it urges the province to “immediately reverse” its decision, saying the directive would result in the removal of “essential education materials” in Alberta school libraries.
Book Removal
The government guidelines in the ministerial order were created based on feedback from a public engagement survey where nearly 80,000 Albertans responded, according to Education Minister Nicolaides.
The directive does not permit school libraries to include materials that have explicit sexual content. The ministerial order defines this as material “containing a detailed and clear depiction of a sexual act.”
Some of the books the province identified as inappropriate include “Gender Queer,” a graphic novel by Maia Kobabe; “Fun Home,” a graphic novel by Alison Bechdel; “Blankets,” a graphic novel by Craig Thompson; and “Flamer,” a graphic novel by Mike Curato.
The requirements apply to public, separate, francophone, charter, and independent schools. It does not include municipal libraries located within schools or to materials selected by teachers for learning purposes.
The list of books identified by Edmonton Public Schools includes Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” and books from authors like Alice Munro and Ayn Rand.
Other books will be unavailable to students in kindergarten through Grade 9, including George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”
The Canadian Press contributed to this article.
Chandra Philip is a news reporter with the Canadian edition of The Epoch Times.