Hold the Line: How Alberta public libraries should respond to Bill 28
On May 13, the Alberta government passed Bill 28 which amends the Libraries Act to grant the Minister of Municipal Affairs, currently Dan Williams, authority over “management, administration or operation” of every public library in the province. The Bill gives the Minister unprecedented power to issue “any order that the Minister considers appropriate.”
This can include what materials (books, ebooks, audio books, DVDs, newspapers and magazines) patrons can have access to in any Alberta public library, which materials must be restricted, and which are prohibited. The same law gives the Minister the ability to restrict or disallow library programs, internet access, and dictate what services libraries can and cannot provide to the public — overriding decisions of municipally-appointed library boards and the judgment of professional library staff. This is unprecedented government overreach, especially in a province that has championed local decision-making as the best way of serving the needs of each community.
The question: What should public libraries do now?
The answer: How about nothing[i]
It is vital that public libraries not take any actions now that directly or indirectly assist the government’s assault on public libraries and the communities they so faithfully serve.
Although Bill 28 has been passed, its practical application will depend on its accompanying regulations which have not been written and approved, a process that may take months and in which library associations, municipal councils, and library boards could still play an influential role in shaping. In the meantime, libraries and librarians should not do anything proactively that furthers the government’s agenda.
Doing nothing, or rather continuing your current practices consistent with your library board’s approved policies and with your own staff’s best professional judgment, is the best way to protect intellectual freedom and to serve your community.
When regulations are put into effect, it will be time to consider forms of strategic compliance—not disobedience, but compliance carried out in creative, technical, or limited ways to reduce the harm to your community and to the values public libraries proudly uphold on behalf of their communities. Libraries and librarians have a long history of doing just that in the face of laws and directives from governments that undermine public libraries’ local autonomy in fulfilling their core missions of defending and promoting intellectual freedom and of welcoming and serving the diversity of their communities.
[i] This is the same answer the Alberta Teachers’ Association suggested in a recent message to Alberta’s teachers in the face of the Alberta government’s equally harmful Bill 25.