Censorship

The Government of Alberta embarrassed itself and all Canadians when Education Minister Demetrios Nicholaides issued a directive in July to all Alberta school boards banning from all Alberta school libraries, both elementary and secondary, a wide array of books that met his definition of having any “sexually explicit content” or “non-sexually explicit content” whatsoever.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has provided a new list of publications that the agency detained at the border or barred from entering Canada.The newest list covers the second quarter of 2025 (i.e., April, May, June).The CBSA’s officers typically review the publications on the list and then ban some publications as obscene or as hate propaganda.You can view and download the PDF copy of this list here.

17th Century puritanism has come back to life in the Alberta Government. Last week, its Minister of Education, Demetrios Nicolaides signed a Ministerial Order that is jaw-dropping. Concerned that some Alberta school libraries have books that are too sexually explicit, he decided to solve the problem.

In April 2025, administrators at the University of Prince Edward Island demanded that Christopher Griffin, an artist in residence, take down a painting because it offended two U.S. professors.When he learned of the university administrators’ demand, Griffin quit his unpaid job and protested the university’s censorship. The university subsequently backed away from its demand.REPORTAGE

Leading Canadian legal and human rights scholars released an open letter today calling on the Regional Municipality of York to reinstate a long-time member of its Paramedic Services fired for a Facebook comment deploring the Government of Israel’s bombing of Iran and its killing of journalists, municipal and health care workers, and fellow first responders in Gaza.