The Writers’ Guild of Alberta stands with librarians and educators, echoing their grave concerns about the impact of the Government of Alberta’s ministerial order on the “Standards for the Selection, Availability, and Access of School Library Materials.” Banning books—and make no mistake, this is the intended outcome of this order—has real consequences in our society.
This ministerial order infringes on a fundamental charter right: the right to freedom of expression, a right that includes freedom to listen, read, and receive expression in all its myriad forms. Children, as well as adults, hold these rights. Such an attack on a fundamental freedom is serious. The consequences of this order will be felt most deeply by our children, the writers who write for them, and the librarians who have the expertise to introduce them to materials appropriate to their individual growth and interests.
When you infringe or curtail a child’s freedom to read, you curtail that child’s capacity to seek truths for themselves, to expand their imaginations by exploring worlds far different than their own, and to find community in the pages of a book.
You tell writers that there are no-go zones—that their work could be deemed “inappropriate” for the very audiences they are trying to reach and that they should curtail their expression or risk having their books banned.
You override the expertise of librarians and educators, limiting their ability to do their jobs in the best interests of their students and communities. Librarians, teachers, and school administrators in Alberta schools already work within best practices for the selection of age-appropriate materials. According to the results of the Government of Alberta’s own engagement survey on this issue, a strong majority of Albertans (61%) answered “no” to the question “Have you ever been concerned about a book in a school library being inappropriate for a certain age group due to sexually explicit content?” And then in answer to the question as to who should decide what materials in school libraries, nearly 70% answered that these decisions should be left to the experts: librarians, teachers, school administrators, and school boards.
This ministerial order is not only unnecessary but its vague wording risks opening the door to further restrictions and more book bans. This is a critical issue for Alberta’s writers. We stress that the instigation of this false moral panic in Alberta is the result of particular groups using tactics now familiar to us from the United States. Data from the United States shows the results of these tactics and how the impact on both writers and readers often increases over time. PEN America found that by the 2023-24 school year 4000 (not just four) unique titles had been taken off the shelves of school libraries in the United States since 2021. Each year, the numbers grow, and with them, the reasons for taking books off shelves—all with the intention of silencing the free expression of writers and limiting readers’ access to information and stories about themselves, their bodies, and their histories.
We urge the government to rescind this order and restore the decision-making where it belongs: in schools, in the hands of expert librarians and educators, and in homes, with individual children and their parents.
WGA Board of Directors