Standing Up for What You Are: A Guide for a Positive Response to Provincial Demands

I. The Current Dilemma for Alberta Public Libraries

Alberta library staff and boards face a serious dilemma. How should their libraries respond to the provincial government's unprecedented steps to override a long and unblemished tradition of local governance of Alberta’s public libraries which began 119 years ago?  One of the first pieces of legislation adopted by the new Province of Alberta was its 1907 Libraries Act which provided for municipal authorities and local public library boards to establish and manage public libraries. Successive updates continued to define these municipal library boards as independent corporations vested with full management and control of local public library services.

The province now seeks to reverse that long history by Bill 28. It gives the Minister of Municipal Affairs, currently Dan Williams, unilateral authority over all public libraries in the province through direct orders. The amended Regulation issued after Bill 28 seeks to place provincially dictated barriers between Albertans and what they read in libraries. For now, this is framed as protecting children. But Alberta public libraries have long considered age-appropriate access to information and ideas and have strong policies and professional practices in place that support families, age-appropriate collections, and parental choice. Importantly, these policies and practices respect the constitutional rights of all Canadians to seek and receive information.

Contrary to the impression created by the province’s statements and amended Regulation, public libraries in Alberta do not have any obscene or pornographic materials. Such materials are illegal under Canada’s Criminal Code.

Collection of books, films, and other materials in all Alberta public libraries is guided by the library board’s collection development policy; is informed by professional library standards; and is implemented by dedicated library staff.  Further, those materials are catalogued and shelved appropriately by age, topic, and format. 

Every public library has a formal process for community members, concerned about a book, film, or other material in their library’s collection, to request reconsideration of whether that item should remain in the library’s collection or should be removed or relocated. All Alberta libraries take requests for reconsideration very seriously. 

As a measure of public concern, it is important to examine how many requests there have been over the past 10 years to reconsider books for children or young adults across all Alberta libraries.  

That information is available from records collected by the Canadian Library Association, subsequently by the Canadian Federation of Library Associations, as well as the Book and Periodical Council’s Freedom to Read Week Committee, and now by the Centre for Free Expression. These are all consolidated in the Canadian Library Challenges Database. 

Between 2016 and today—a period of more than 10 years—there were only 85 reported challenges concerning library materials for children or young adults across all 221 of Alberta’s public library boards. Of these 221 library boards, 209 did not receive a single documented challenge to their collection decisions in the past decade. With about 4.1 million adults in Alberta, that means over the past ten years only 0.002% reached out to their public library to voice a concern with public library holdings for children or young adults. 

II. What to do?

First: 
By January 1, 2027, each board should reply as follows to the Government of Alberta:

1. Affirm that no materials currently in your library’s collection merit censorship and further restriction, adding:

• All materials in your library are carefully chosen in accordance with your local library board’s collection development policy and its selection and deselection criteria, which ensure your community’s needs and interests are met.
• Your knowledgeable, dedicated library staff classify and catalogue materials so they are available for age-appropriate audiences, and they help direct all library users to materials that meet their interests and needs.
• Your library has a policy that permits members of the community to request that an item in your collection be removed or relocated. It takes each request seriously and carefully investigates the matter. At the conclusion of the investigation, the library informs the complainant of its professional decision and the reasons for it. 
• Since there are no library materials that require restriction, your library has not developed policies for age verification or a parent/guardian’s authorization for those under age 16 to access materials.
• Finally, your library’s decisions about the suitability of materials for its collection are made in accord with the long-standing practice of public libraries across Canada, the United States, and internationally.  In determining what materials should be in the library and where they should be placed, all library decisions are based on consideration of each work as a whole.  As the American Library Association, the world’s oldest and largest library association, sums up this practice, “Passages or parts of the work in question should not be pulled out of context. The values and faults should be weighed against each other and the opinions based on the materials as a whole.”

2. At the same time, confirm that your library’s policies relating to the amended Regulation are publicly available. These include:

• Collection Development/Material Selection/Material Deselection
• Internet Use
• Procedures for obtaining child’s library card
• Right to file a request for reconsideration of library materials

Second: 
Between now and January 1, 2027, your library’s public messaging should highlight the following points. [A more complete version of this will be placed in a toolkit on the CFE website in the very near future.]

1. The major province-wide survey conducted in January 2026 by Janet Brown Opinion Research in partnership with Trend Research found that 82 percent of Albertans trust public libraries to decide what materials should be available and that 70 percent of Albertans use public libraries at least a few times a year – an unprecedented level of public confidence in a public institution. 
2. You appreciate the ongoing support your community shows for its local library and will continue to make the needs and interests of your community a priority.
3. You are deeply concerned that both Bill 28 and the amended Regulation of the Libraries Act are serious threats to Alberta’s 119-year tradition of public libraries being locally governed, locally accountable, and best able to determine how to meet the needs and interests of the people of their communities. 
4. You are also concerned the amended Regulation under Bill 28 is unconstitutional. Section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects freedom of expression and the rights of all Canadians to seek and receive information.  Public libraries play a central role in making that right a reality. But the amended Regulation impairs public libraries' ability to do so.  More specifically, the amended Regulation constitutes an overly broad impairment of the expressive freedom rights of those members of your community under 16 to seek and receive information -- therefore violating not only the Charter but also the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Canada signed on May 28th, 1990, and ratified on December 13th, 1991.

If the government objects: 
If the provincial government objects to the fact your library has no books that require restrictions on access and a system of prior authorization, ask the government to prepare a list of titles that it wants restricted. Advise that if they prepare such a list, your library will review those titles in accordance with its collection development policy.

If the government takes action:
If the government takes any action against public libraries for upholding their local board-approved policies in the face of its demands to do otherwise, it will be time to turn to the courts to determine if, as it seems, the government’s actions are a violation of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and, in that case, what remedy the courts will order.  Should it come to that, the Centre for Free Expression stands ready to help. For now, though, Alberta libraries' extraordinary public trust may be their best protection from ill-advised government actions.

James L. Turk is the Director of the Centre for Free Expression
Toni Samek is Senior Scholar at the Centre for Free Expression and Professor Emerita and former Chair at the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta
Peter Bailey is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Free Expression and former CEO of the St. Albert Public Library, St. Alberta, Alberta