School library book ban an effective distraction

By Lethbridge Herald on August 6, 2025.

Trevor Harrison
For the Herald

Alberta’s education minister, Demetrios Nicolaides, has announced standards for determining what age-appropriate books will appear in school libraries. Students in any grade will not be able to see materials showing explicit sexual content, defined by the province as detailed and clear depictions of sexual acts, including masturbation, penetration and ejaculation.

Only students in Grade 10 or higher will be able to see non-explicit sexual content, such as depictions of sexual acts that are not detailed or clear. Students can, however, obtain information about puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, breastfeeding, biological functions, kissing or handholding.

Religious texts, such as the Bible, including the Book of Solomon, will be allowed on school’s bookshelves.

Minister Nicolaides has said no books are being banned and denies that the new policy amounts to censorship. Many critics disagree.

The minister’s announcement has been greeted by astonishment and anger, but also hilarity. Online comments note that students nowadays are almost allergic to books but that the materials being banned can be found in huge dollops on the Internet – a source with which students are very much acquainted.

Beyond the seeming absurdity of trying to censor the multiverse, the UCP’s ham-handed efforts have raised several serious questions. To begin, it should be noted that this entire firestorm began when a fringe group of social conservatives found four – yes, four – coming-of-age graphic novels in school libraries in Edmonton and Calgary.

In past years, local school boards and school librarians could have dealt with the issue. But the government has been kneecapping school boards while denying funding for the hiring of librarians. In many schools, librarians are now on the endangered species list.

The entire affair seems akin to using a sledgehammer to swat a fly when, with a little bit of common sense and funding, school librarians could have done the swatting.

But it has also not gone unnoticed that the four banned books focus on issues particularly relevant to members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community. Critics contend the government is ramping up the culture wars to placate social conservative groups who, it must be remembered, lit the fire in the first place.

As in nearly everything the UCP does, there is a political calculus at work. Social conservatives are a small but influential corner of the UCP’s base. But they were particularly important to Danielle Smith’s leadership victory in 2022 and the UCP’s electoral win in 2023.

Book bans rekindle memories of the unlamented Social Credit party. In office from 1935 to 1971, Social Credit tried repeatedly to censor ideas, and even people, with whom it disagreed. In 1954, Premier Manning’s government created the Advisory Board on Objectionable Publications, a watchdog organization that worked with government, police, and local newspapers to monitor and restrict the sale and distribution of reading materials in the province. Some critics fear the book bans are only the start of politically motivated efforts to go after certain groups.

Despite repeated assertions that she is a libertarian, Premier Smith heads one of the most centralized and controlling governments in Canada.

Distraction is one subtle means of control, and the UCP has many issues requiring its use. Health care remains a mess, much of it of the government’s own making. The price of oil is below budget forecasts for the year. Several decisions, coal mining in particular, are unpopular. And separatism, nurtured by the premier to extract concessions from the federal government, threatens to spin out of control.

The fact that so many people are talking about book bans – including me – suggests the effort at distraction has found a measure of success.

Trevor W. Harrison is a retired political sociologist at the University of Lethbridge.

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