‘Vicious compliance’: Alberta premier decries Edmonton Public Schools’ banned book list | CBC News

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith slammed the Edmonton Public School Board Friday morning for its banned book list, which features more than 200 titles.

The internally distributed list, which CBC News obtained Thursday, was in response to a provincial government directive to identify books that are not age-appropriate and remove them from school library shelves.

But the list included titles like The Handmaid’s Tale, The Color Purple, The Godfather and Jaws. Books from authors like George R. R. Martin, Sarah J. Maas and Maya Angelou are also on the list. 

“Edmonton Public is clearly doing a little vicious compliance over what the direction is,” Smith said during an unrelated news conference.

The point of this work is to keep graphic, sexually explicit content out of elementary schools, she said.

“If they need us to hold their hand through the process to identify what kind of materials are appropriate … we will more than 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 school board confirmed Friday morning that the list CBC News obtained is accurate. A spokesperson shared a statement from the board chair Julie Kusiek Thursday evening, saying the board shares concerns raised by the public about the library policy, and they acknowledged that “several excellent books” will be taken off the shelves this fall.

On Friday afternoon, the spokesperson said Kusiek will be contacting Smith directly about compliance with the ministerial order.

Canadian author Margaret Atwood, who wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, declined to speak with CBC News, but noted in a social media post Friday that her novel was banned in Edmonton.

“Don’t read it, your hair will catch on fire! Get one now before they have public book burnings of it,” she wrote.

Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides announced in the spring that new rules would be coming to school libraries, after parents raised concerns to the government about four coming-of-age graphic novels — most of which show nudity and sexual 2SLGBTQ+ content — found in circulation in Edmonton and Calgary public schools.

Nicolaides signed a ministerial order, dated July 4, laying out the standards for school library materials and included definitions.

Among other things, the order states that school boards cannot allow explicit sexual content, which it defines as clear depictions of a sexual act, such as masturbation, penetrative sex, and the use of sex toys. But it holds caveats for depictions in religious texts, and non-explicit sexual content — depiction of a sexual act that isn’t detailed or clear.

In the Edmonton Public Schools list, for example, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was flagged for non-explicit sexual content. The list says only students in grades 10 to 12 would be allowed to access the book, if it’s “developmentally appropriate.”

Government officials have reiterated that the directive is about protecting children and youth from mature content, not banning books. But Ira Wells, president of PEN Canada, an organization that fights against literary censorship, considers what is happening in Alberta the first — and largest — book ban of its kind in Canada.

A book ban, Wells said, happens when a book is removed from a public or school library shelf because someone, for example, deems it harmful or morally offensive.

“What the government of Alberta is doing here is book banning. It is literary censorship and we should use those words,” he said.

“All parents — myself included — are concerned about the media that our children consume. We want to be sure that our children are consuming age-appropriate media.

“But here we have a case where partisan politicians are taking it upon themselves to determine what our children should read. That’s a Rubicon that we don’t want to be crossing.”

During an unrelated news conference Friday morning, Nicolaides told reporters that he would be speaking with Edmonton Public Schools about its list, noting that he does have some questions about featured titles.

Read the Edmonton Public School Board’s full list of books below:

“Our primary interest with the ministerial order is to ensure that books that contain graphic depictions of sexual acts are provided to children in an age-appropriate way,” he said.

“I want to get a better understanding of how these books were selected and what mechanisms and method the Edmonton Public Schools has used,” he said, adding that he expects to get more information from the school board soon.

The Edmonton Public Schools staff spent the summer making sure “only books that directly met the criteria of the ministerial order” were added to the school board’s list, the school board’s spokesperson said Thursday.

John Hilton-O’Brien, executive director of Parents for Choice in Education, a parental rights group that raised concerns about the graphic novels back in the spring, is also baffled by the list.

“No reasonable person can take this seriously,” Hilton-O’Brien told CBC News, accusing the school board of attempting “malicious compliance” to get out of removing content from their libraries.

“We wanted schools to pull things like graphic novels with explicit content. We didn’t ask for them to play book-burning roulette with Margaret Atwood and Maya Angelou.”

CBC News is reaching out to other school boards about their lists. Principals with the Edmonton Catholic School Division are reviewing their respective school library collections to ensure compliance with the ministerial order, a spokesperson said. 

Fort McMurray Public Schools is figuring out its next steps per the ministerial order, a spokesperson said, but as of Friday afternoon, the four graphic novels flagged in the spring are the only ones so far that it is ensuring will not be in its libraries.

During her news conference, Smith said the Red Deer Public Schools may release its list Friday. But a school board spokesperson told CBC News that will not be the case.

It, too, is working to meet the requirements set out by the government and will be in compliance by Oct. 1, they said.

The Calgary Board of Education, that city’s public school board, will share more with staff and families once its list’s details are confirmed, a spokesperson said, adding that it is reviewing more than 500,000 titles and aligning library policies to the new regulations.

The Opposition NDP issued a statement Thursday from education critic Amanda Chapman, saying the United Conservative Party government is focused on banning books instead of preventing a teachers’ strike.