Rob Breakenridge: Alberta's book-ban backfire

How a libertarian got sloppy and banned some literary classics.

By: Rob Breakenridge

The classics are now safe in Alberta, thankfully, having been rescued at the last minute by the very government that imperilled them in the first place. On Monday, after spending over a week taking a beating, the government said that the ban would be narrowed to illustrations and pictures of sexual acts, not written descriptions.

So that’s that. The Handmaid’s Tale remains library safe in Alberta. The bizarre journey to Monday’s announcement may not be a curriculum-worthy parable, but this whole sad affair is certainly a cautionary tale about how one government managed to badly bungle what should have been a simple issue and an easy political win.

It didn’t have to be this way. The government had spent months insisting that their sole focus and concern was graphic sexual images, and such a focus probably wouldn’t have been noticed much by the public — and probably would have been broadly supported by those who did notice. If we’d started with a ministerial order like the one the Alberta government finally released on Monday, one that actually singled out and targeted graphic sexual images, you’re probably not reading this column right now.

Meanwhile, having spent days being ridiculed and subjected to improvised Margaret Atwood fiction, the four graphic novels that prompted this dramatic government intervention have all since been removed. It’s unclear how much left remains to be found and removed … if there’s anything at all. Burning a lot of political capital to issue an potentially instantly redundant order certainly looks a lot like a government choosing to take careful aim before shooting its own foot.

There are certainly bigger issues facing the education system; a looming teachers’ strike or lockout, for example, or the fact that school capacity and staffing levels seem unable to keep up with Alberta’s rapidly growing population.

It’s easy enough to see the political temptation to focus instead on culture war-type issues, especially since, after all, those are a convenient distraction from the other issues. It’s also politically useful to be the defender of parents and parental rights. Alberta’s government isn’t the first to pick up on the concern that exists — fairly or unfairly — that things are happening in schools that parents aren’t fully aware of and might find objectionable.

Alberta followed the lead of New Brunswick and Saskatchewan in implementing a policy requiring parental notification and consent if children under 16 wish to use different names or pronouns at school. Despite loud pushback, such policies appear to have relatively broad public support.

Going after graphic sexual images in schools must have seemed like a slam-dunk for a government that may have been craving the thrill of another such victory. Until it blew up in their faces. Now, I can’t imagine any province would be inclined to follow Alberta’s lead on this issue … at least not as recklessly.

It’s not that the process was rushed, though, which is a bizarre detail. It was late May when the Alberta government first called attention to this issue and the subsequent month was spent drafting a ministerial order. That order received cabinet approval in late June and it was sent to school boards in early July. School boards were ordered to have any and all materials with “explicit sexual content” identified and removed by October 1st. Whereas “non-explicit sexual content” could still be incorporated at the high school level, it was an all-ages, all-schools ban for the “explicit” stuff.

The folks at the Edmonton Public School Board (EPSB) clearly wanted this done before students showed up for classes, and in what Premier Danielle Smith described as “vicious compliance,” they prepared a list of verboten books. The list was completed and distributed internally at the beginning of this month. That list covered approximately 200 books, including such classics as The Handmaid’s Tale, Brave New World, and Atlas Shrugged.

Smith may have found the EPSB’s action vicious, but it was also effective, and on point. It presented the province with the bizarre spectacle of a government led by a self-proclaimed libertarian overseeing perhaps the most sweeping book ban in recent Canadian history. The embarrassment was palpable and well-deserved.

After all, buried in the premier’s accusation that EPSB was engaged in "vicious compliance” was a tacit acknowledgement that the board was indeed complying. The long list of banned books may have been extremely awkward for the government, but it was in keeping with the wording of the original ministerial order.

Were school boards really expected to kinda, sorta obey and give certain books a pass? And to then assume that the province would, in turn, give them a pass? Conversely, under the circumstances, it would be easy to understand the suspicion at the school board level that perhaps the province was hoping to find and call out examples of non-compliance.

The ministerial order was quickly paused so that it could be revised. Even this proved challenging. On Tuesday of last week, the premier said the pause and rewrite would last a matter of “hours.” Then, a press conference announcing the new policy was scheduled for Friday, only to be postponed at the last minute. After almost a week, the new ministerial order was presented on Monday.

This should put the matter to rest, but given all that’s happened so far, it’s hard to say for certain.

It’s noteworthy that for as much as the Alberta government sought to position itself as the defender of good, righteous school content, the concept of censorship still evokes a strong, visceral reaction. We saw this a few years ago, when one Ontario school board faced a huge backlash for pulling books under an “equity-based book weeding policy.” It was the same sort of impulse that led the publisher of Roald Dahl’s books to rewrite some of his works in order to remove “offensive” language.

We don’t want kids exposed to genuine hatred or graphic sexual content, but there’s clearly a healthy suspicion here of what we can call both the “woke left” and the “woke right” and the extent to which they stretch those concepts and ultimately suppress legitimate and important literature.

This was, or should have been, an easy problem for Smith and the government to avoid. All they needed to do was write a ministerial order carefully enough to ensure it actually specified what the province claimed to want. Having botched this, their options were being rightly deemed censors, or grudgingly fessing up to being sloppy. They, wisely, chose the latter.

There’s a lesson for them here. Let’s hope they learn it.

Rob Breakenridge is a Calgary-based podcaster and writer and host of The Line: Alberta Podcast. He can be found at robbreakenridge.ca and and reached at rob.breakenridge@gmail.com. The latest episode of The Line Alberta: Podcast will be released tonight — find it and more at Alberta.ReadTheLine.ca.

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