Democracy, Access to Information, and Young People’s Right to Information
The past year marked a turning point for expressive freedom in Canadian libraries. While debates over library collections, programs and services are not new, recent developments reveal a broader shift in the relationship between governments, public institutions, and the public’s right to seek information. Legislative intervention, organized censorship campaigns, and reductions in library capacity increasingly challenge libraries’ longstanding role as independent institutions that provide equitable access to information and recorded knowledge. Although Alberta has been the epicentre of these developments, similar pressures have emerged across Canada, making access to information a defining public policy issue.
The most visible challenge has been growing government intervention in decisions traditionally governed by professional standards and local library boards. Alberta’s Bill 28 and its implementing regulations require public libraries to restrict young people’s access to certain materials while expanding provincial authority over how those restrictions are administered. Although introduced as legislation to protect children from ‘sexually explicit’ materials, library organizations, municipalities, educators, writers, and civil liberties advocates argue that the legislation fundamentally changes the relationship between government and public libraries. Rather than supporting libraries as institutions that facilitate access to information, the legislation positions libraries to be instruments for regulating access consistent with government ideology.
The implications extend beyond individual books. Critics argue that Bill 28 transfers decision-making from professional expertise and local governance to political regulation, while creating uncertainty, increasing administrative costs, and raising concerns about reader privacy through age-verification requirements. Most significantly, they argue that the legislation limits young people’s ability to seek information independently. Canada is a party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which recognizes children’s right to seek, receive, and impart information and encourages governments to promote access to diverse sources of knowledge. Public libraries have long been one of the principal institutions through which those rights are realized.
School libraries have become a parallel site of expressive freedom disputes. Provincial orders requiring Alberta school divisions to review collections and remove material proscribed by government has resulted in the removal of numerous titles from school shelves. Although the government maintained that the reviews targeted only sexually explicit content, educators, librarians, writers, and scholars questioned the transparency, consistency, and educational rationale behind the Ministerial Order. The differing responses among school divisions reinforced confusion and concern about why and how political priorities increasingly threatened students’ access to information.
A second trend has been the growing organization of censorship efforts across Canada. Freedom to Read Week 2026 assumed renewed significance as libraries, publishers, writers, and professional associations publicly defended intellectual freedom. Evidence from the Canadian Library Challenges Database, maintained by the Centre for Free Expression, demonstrates that challenges to library materials are no longer isolated local disputes but part of a broader lobby group pattern. The database shows that works representing LGBTQIA+ communities, Indigenous peoples, racialized communities, and other historically marginalized voices are challenged disproportionately. Together, these developments demonstrate that contemporary debates are increasingly about limiting access to ideas rather than responding to individual complaints about specific books.
A third challenge has been the erosion of library capacity itself. School boards in Ontario and Nova Scotia proposed or implemented substantial reductions in professional librarian positions, diminishing students’ access to information literacy instruction, reading support, and research expertise. At a time when misinformation, algorithmically curated information, and artificial intelligence complicate the information environment, professional librarians play an ever-important role in helping young people evaluate evidence, recognize misinformation, and develop independent thought and critical thinking skills.
Reductions also affected other public information institutions. Library and Archives Canada ended proactive declassification citing resource constraints, limiting public access to historical government records and reducing government transparency. Correctional Service Canada’s proposed reductions to prison library services were only reversed after widespread opposition emphasizing the importance of professional library services for literacy, education, and rehabilitation. These developments illustrate that access to information depends not only on legal protections but also on sustained public investment in the institutions that make access possible.
Taken together, these developments suggest that the central issue is whether certain books remain on library shelves. Rather, it is whether democratic societies continue to support independent public institutions that enable people to seek information without political direction or government censorship. This question is especially significant for young people, whose ability to encounter diverse perspectives, evaluate competing ideas, and develop independent judgment is fundamental to democratic citizenship.
The debates of the past year therefore extend well beyond libraries themselves. They concern the protection of expressive freedom, the independence of public institutions, and the public’s right—including the rights of children and young people—to seek, receive, and engage with information without unwarranted barriers. Libraries are democratic institutions because they provide equitable access to knowledge, support informed public participation, and foster the critical inquiry upon which democracy depends. Protecting that role is therefore not simply a matter of library policy, but of safeguarding the democratic conditions that make freedom of expression meaningful.
