Alberta Minister of Education and Childcare Demetrios Nicolaides made an announcement in a July 10 news conference that the government will be moving forward with introducing new standards for banning books containing “explicit sexual content” from school libraries.
The ministerial order, signed by Nicolaides on July 4, outlined that school boards must remove the material by October 1 of this year and develop policies in alignment with these standards by January 2026.
School boards must be able to review library materials, supervise student access, as well as report this information to the education ministry on request. They will not be receiving any additional funding to ensure that these policies are enacted by the October deadline.
The standards will come into effect for every school in Alberta, with an exception for the over 50 municipal libraries that share space with a school.
The standards come after the Minister was alerted to four books containing explicit sexual material. Although the minister has not personally read the books, he said that the new standards “reflect the values and priorities” of Albertans.
Previously, a survey was opened by the Alberta government in May to see how Albertans would respond to the standards. The minster reported that majority of the respondents were parents with school aged children.
The survey received over 70,000 responses from Albertans, with majority stating that they were unsupportive of the government establishing provincial standards. Many respondents supported librarians and teachers setting standards instead.
The survey also outlined significant concern for the removal of 2SLGBT+ content. In the conference, the Minister assured that the goal of the new standards was not “banning” books and that they will “strike a balance” between the materials chosen by teachers for libraries while ensuring that sexual content was not accessible.
Although the survey did not define what sexually explicit material looked like, that has changed in the new ministerial order. The order defines sexually explicit content as content that contained “detailed and clear depiction of a sexual act.”
“When we had our engagement and consultations with the Alberta school boards,” Nicolaides said. “One of the things that was impressed upon me was the need to have really robust and clear definitions because undoubtedly there is some gray area.”
That means that books including sexually explicit material will be banned, while non-explicit, age-appropriate content remains accessible to only high school students, with students aged grade nine and below excluded from accessing the material.
Examples of non-sexual content includes content relating to medical conditions, examinations or treatment, informative depictions of sexual act such as encyclopedias. Acts like kissing, handholding, hugging and implications of sexual acts were also outlined as examples as non-sexual content.
Religious texts were exempted from the ban, although the definitions for what constitutes that material was not outlined.
Nicolaides clarified that “the spirit” of the ensuring that sexually explicit content was “not made available to” children would be part of how material was determined as inappropriate or appropriate.
