An Open Letter to Alberta Library Boards Facing a Tough Choice among Three Options

Your board, like every library board in Alberta, has a difficult decision to make by January 1, 2027. You have three options as discussed below.

Your situation is a result of Bill 28 which gives significant new powers to Dan Williams, the Minister of Municipal Affairs, to order libraries to censor and restrict library materials and resources. Among those powers is the right to issue regulations regarding “access to and the use and borrowing of public library property by members of the public, including regulations restricting access, use and borrowing based on age.” 

Minister Williams’ first use of his new powers was to order libraries to restrict access to a wide range of graphic novels and other well-respected library resources – claiming they are obscene or are child pornography. To be clear, no public library in Canada has anything in its collection that is obscene or is child pornography – both are violations of Canada’s Criminal Code. The material he seeks to restrict is both legal and is being properly dealt with professionally and administratively by your library according to the policies your own board has approved.

Your Options:

Option #1: Stand Up for What You Are

Every library in Alberta is founded on several fundamental values reflected in your board’s policies: intellectual freedom, inclusiveness, and serving the needs and interests of everyone in the community. The newly amended regulation directly attacks those core values and your board’s current policies. Option #1 asks you to stand up for your own policies.

Specifically, Option #1 is to affirm that your collection is consistent with your current policies, which already address the matters Minister Williams has raised; that all your resources are appropriately classified and assigned to the children’s, young adult, or adult sections of the library; and that your policies deal with how children and young people acquire and use library cards.

Assuming you find everything in your library is being managed in an age-appropriate manner according to your board’s policies, advise the Minister by January 1, 2027 (ideally on December 31, 2026) that there is nothing that merits restriction. CFE would be pleased to help with the wording for your letter to the Minister.

Options #2 and #3: 

The other two options require you to comply with the Government’s orders. However you comply, you are necessarily violating the values your library champions. Restricting library materials at the demand of governments or donors or other third parties contravenes intellectual freedom.

Option #2 is complying but protesting loudly – that you are doing what the government has ordered but only because the provincial government has put a gun to your head. 

Your messaging to your community should include:

• Your library has long had policies to make sure that only worthwhile books and films are in its collections, that they are classified and placed in age-appropriate groupings whether for children, young adults, or adults; and that there are appropriate provisions for children’s library cards.
• That your library, like all public libraries in Canada, has never had obscenity or child pornography in its collections; that both are illegal under Canada’s Criminal Code.
• That you understand from leading legal experts that the government’s new regulation violates Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms;
• That you look forward to the day when Alberta libraries can return to the practice that has existed for the past 119 years under which local library boards decide policies appropriate for their communities rather than policies being determined according to the ideology of whatever party holds the majority in the Alberta legislature.

Option #3 is complying, perhaps mildly complaining, but basically minimizing the serious violation of intellectual freedom and Albertans’ fundamental rights that Dan Williams’ new regulation is forcing on you and your community. Trying to justify quiet compliance (or, as some describe it, “light touch compliance”) by saying you are just attempting to minimize the impact or trying to protect intellectual freedom may be well-intended but is misleading the public. Bill 28 is an explicit attack on intellectual freedom, allowing the provincial government, whichever party is in power, to force you to impose its ideological preferences, as Minister Williams is doing with his first use of his new powers under Bill 28.

Concluding Comments

Public libraries' strength is that their collections and programs have never been determined by a government’s ideology. Instead, public libraries have selected a rich array of materials so community members can choose what interests them. This includes teenagers as well. Libraries make authors' and artists' creativity available, letting their ideas reach readers, viewers, and listeners. Protecting access to their work is essential to intellectual freedom, cultural expression, and democracy.

Downplaying the seriousness of what the Government of Alberta is forcing on you risks losing the public’s trust, your staff's trust, and raises significant questions about your library’s commitment to intellectual freedom, which it has long espoused. 

If you are going to do what the provincial government is demanding, at the very least, make clear to your staff, to your community, and to the public more generally, that you are doing so under duress, and that your library will work hard for a return to being free to serve the needs of your whole community, not the political preferences of the government in power.

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. Albert, Alberta