Dan Williams’ proposed book ban aims to gin up a moral panic ‘with no basis in reality’

Interesting question: Has Dan Williams, Alberta’s minister of municipal affairs and de facto chief censor, ever been inside a public library? 

If he ever had been, he’d know perfectly well that children are not exposed to pornography in Alberta public libraries – unlike, say, on daddy’s smart phone.

“There is absolutely no evidence for the government’s assertions,” Peter Bailey told me yesterday. “This whole moral panic is a made-up thing with no basis in reality.” 

Mr. Bailey, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Free Expression and retired CEO of the St. Albert Public Library, posed the question above. 

If Mr. Williams has been inside a library, he’s not letting on. “Libraries organize collections by subject and age (or age-appropriateness). At SAPL, books for children are physically separated on an entirely different floor from books for adults! Books for young adults have their own section,” Mr. Bailey said. 

The four graphic novels demonized by Mr. Williams are all found in different locations in St. Albert’s collections, for adults and young adults, he observed. 

This topic comes up, of course, in the wake of Mr. Williams’ announcement last week that, by gosh, Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party Government will ensure that children and young teens can’t access sexually graphic images in books at public libraries. They’ll – ummm – have to be stored in a sealed off area like the dirty movies in the golden age of VCR rentals, the minister explained.

The side trip into book banning was contained in Bill 28, the Municipal Affairs and Housing Statutes Amendment Act, 2026, introduced in the Legislature by Mr. Williams on Thursday. Alberta’s public libraries were not consulted about the minister’s book-ban brain storm, which the UCP naturally claims is not a book ban. 

Anyone who has been in a public library understands that there’s precious little there that qualifies as pornography in the sense Mr. Williams describes as he tries to gin up a new front in the MAGA culture war.

Indeed, it seems likely that Mr. Williams understands this perfectly well, but also knows that culture wars work well to stir up the base of parties like the UCP and keep everyone from focusing on more substantive issues of governance, such as the metastasizing dodgy contracts scandal that Premier Danielle Smith’s government would very much like us to ignore. 

You know, like yesterday’s revelation in The Globe and Mail that “Alberta Justice Minister Mickey Amery shortened the amount of time Elections Albertahas to penalize political finance violations while his friend and relative Sam Mraiche was under investigation by the regulator,” and that the Opposition NDP is now calling for Mr. Amery to be fired. 

But, I digress. So I asked Mr. Bailey what libraries can do not to make it so easy for the UCP to keep this issue at a boil when the government’s new regulations come down.

Just say no, he advised. “Libraries already separate collections by age. This special section for the naughty books has got to be nonstarter. Libraries and library boards should refuse this idea outright. Don’t comply in advance! Or ever!”

This might turn out to be a more effective strategy that it would appear at first glance to a nervous library board member. After all, research for the Coalition of Alberta Public Libraries done by respected Janet Brown Opinion Research in January shows that 82 per cent of Albertans trust their local library to make appropriate decisions about what books to make available. Sixty-nine per cent thought such decisions should be made locally, not by some would-be provincial censor. (My words, not Ms. Brown’s, to be fair.)

“Albertans are almost twice as likely to oppose regulations that would restrict access to certain materials in public libraries than they are to support restrictions,” a slide show on the respected Alberta pollster’s research indicates. “Six in ten (60%) would oppose such measures (Including 48% who strongly oppose, and 13% who somewhat oppose). Just over one in three (35%) would either strongly (22%) or somewhat (12%) support such measures. Five per cent (5%) are unsure.”

Said Mr. Bailey: “Yes, it may generally be difficult to get Albertans riled up about attacks on the autonomy of library boards or even intellectual freedom as an abstract principle, but talking about the minister having the power to decide what Albertans can or cannot read or access without restrictions should upset each and every Albertan, including the supporters of the governing party.”

“Small town libraries can really advocate on this, as they have done successfully before,” Mr. Bailey continued. “Rural UCP MLAs won’t be happy with local constituents complaining about this, or having to deal with the nice, beloved local librarian who is upset by it.”

And why is the UCP focusing on graphic novels first? Hard to know for sure, but it may have had to do with the ease with which Edmonton Public Schools embarrassed the government last summer when it complied with the actual wording, not the intent, of the UCP’s sloppily worded order banning books in school libraries. 

The EPS list had more than 200 books on it, including several classics. As I wrote at the time: “Tout le monde Canada is now laughing at Alberta’s authoritarian social conservative government for the fact Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale ended up on a list of banned books the same government ordered Edmonton’s school board to create, and they’re not going to stop laughing just because you try to blame the school board.”

As for what the UCP is actually trying to accomplish now, Mr. Bailey observed, “it sure isn’t ‘protecting children from pornography.’ That’s absolute nonsense; a non-issue, a made-up thing. Children are not being exposed to pornography in Alberta public libraries. Full stop. 

“The frightening thing about Bill 28 is that it gives government, the minister specifically, the power to decide what Albertans can or cannot read, what information and knowledge they can or cannot access, and what public services they may or may not attend in public libraries. It is right there in the proposed legislation.”

And don’t be too sure the government won’t do just that. “The proposed legislation gives the minister absolute authority ‘to make any order that the minister considers appropriate’ relating to a library or libraries,” Mr. Bailey said. 

“In the U.S., initial success by MAGA groups to ban LGBTQ+ books led quickly to bans on books about slavery, racism and civil rights, books written by Black people and Indigenous peoples, books about climate change, and so on. Don’t think it could happen here? It already is.”

 “We need to get severely normal Albertans across Alberta to understand this is a full-fledged attack on every Albertan’s constitutional right to intellectual freedom and freedom of expression,” Mr. Bailey concluded. “Albertans cannot allow this abridgment of their rights and freedoms. Don’t tread on me, Minister Williams!”