ST. ALBERT, Alberta – The St. Albert Public Library Board has estimated it will cost about $100,000 next year to comply with the United Conservative Party Government’s unprecedented library censorship scheme, which is now the law of the land.
Bearing in mind that the UCP book ban is a policy intended to solve a problem that doesn’t exist but which meshes nicely with the government’s MAGA-adjacent program of distracting voters with never-ending culture wars, that’s $100,000 that could have been spent on, you know, books – not to mention other library materials and activities.
The $100,000 figure comes from the minutes of the May 20 meeting of the St. Albert Public Library Board, soon after the UCP book ban was passed into law. The figure came with a caveat.
According to the minutes, the library’s recently appointed chief executive officer, Laura Winton, “advised that the proposed Bill 28 allocation is a placeholder pending the release of regulations. The Board expressed support for increasing the planning provision for Bill 28 impacts to $100,000.”
Bill 28, of course, is the shorthand commonly used to describe the Municipal Affairs and Housing Statutes Amendment Act, 2026, the law passed by the Legislature on May 13 this year, and given Royal Assent the next day. It includes Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams’ plan to make it difficult for borrowers read books he doesn’t approve of – starting with graphic novels and memoirs by LGBTQ+ authors but ending up God and the UCP Cabinet only know where.
The regulations have since been published by the government. The complicated censorship scheme, which allows the minister to intrude in unprecedented ways into the operation of public libraries, is found in section 35 of the regulations. They will require library staff to determine which books must be held in a secure storage area, like dirty movies in the golden age of VCR rentals – allowing the government to pretend that it’s not the one banning and restricting books.
“Bill 28 is now law, and as a public library we are legally required to comply with its requirements,” Ms. Winton told me last week. “Like many Alberta public libraries, SAPL is working closely with the Coalition of Alberta Public Libraries (CAP Libraries) to coordinate our approach and develop shared solutions wherever possible.”
“As we continue our planning and receive additional provincial guidance, our understanding of the implementation requirements and associated costs may continue to evolve,” she said.
Its’s reasonable to assume, though, that the Library Board, advised by senior library staff, were given a reasonable assessment of what the complying with the censorship scheme will cost, what with the requirement for the storage of books deemed inappropriate for UCP sensibilities in a sealed off area of the library and staff time to process requests for access. The result, of course, will simply be that many libraries stop purchasing materials the UCP morality police don’t like.
Of course, there are options for public library boards other than meekly knuckling under.
In a thoughtful blog post published on July 27, James Turk, director of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University, examined the flaws of the legislation and set out three possible responses for library boards, along with pros and cons
Option 1: “Accept the government’s legal requirement that each public library identify all library material to be restricted, i.e., agree that the library will determine what is to be censored within the government’s open-ended framework in the Regulation.” In other words, roll over. This appears to be the trend in Alberta.
This “ensures the library will suffer no financial or other penalties from the Alberta government,” Dr. Turk wrote, and “provides the library the ability (at least initially) to minimize the range of materials deemed to fall within the government’s open-ended restrictions by interpreting those restrictions as narrowly as possible in its identification of library materials to be restricted.”
It also “abandons public libraries’ foundational commitment to intellectual freedom by carrying out the government’s order and serving as agents of censorship on the government’s behalf,” he observed. In addition, it means there will be no legal challenge of this constitutionally questionable law.
Option 2: “Acknowledge that the government is asserting its authority to regulate the public’s access to public library material but demand that the government provide a list of the titles of all ‘library materials’ to be restricted and advise the government that the libraries’ compliance is contingent on a government list of restricted titles.”
This way, Dr. Turk wrote, libraries can “at least nominally uphold their commitment to intellectual freedom by refusing to draw up the lists of what is to be restricted – requiring the censoring body to do so.” The possibility of a legal challenge remains.
On the downside, this “leaves public libraries vulnerable to penalty if the government refuses to provide the list of specific library materials to be restricted but rather insists that each library comply with the regulations as currently written.”
Option 3: “Advise the government that its actions are an unconstitutional infringement of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ Section 2(b) Right to Freedom of Expression and that libraries will be seeking to launch a constitutional challenge.”
That, Dr. Turk argued, would uphold “public libraries’ foundational principle of intellectual freedom for Canadians,” obstruct implementation of an unconstitutional ban, and fire a shot across the bow of any other government considering similar policies.
Alas, he noted, public libraries would have to cover the costs, and doing that would “subject the libraries to vehement criticism by the Government of Alberta and by parental rights groups that pressured the government to introduce the challenged legislation.”
This is Alberta, so we be assured that is exactly what would happen.
“It appears libraries are going with Option 1,” said Peter Bailey, who retired last year as the St. Albert Library’s CEO and is a senior fellow at the Centre for Free Expression. “It’s disappointing. Freedom of expression is at the core of what libraries are. We can’t be seen as enabling the government’s efforts to limit that freedom.”
There are about 220 public library boards in Alberta governing 325 branch facilities. While the sums will be different at small community libraries and large metropolitan library systems, one way or another that’s likely to mean a hell of lot of money that should be going to library services will be spent instead of another of the UCP’s intentionally divisive culture war tactics.
From the government’s perspective, though, this is infinitely superior to having voters focus on the scandals from dodgy health care contracts, to dangerous separation referendums, to open-pit coal mines seemingly wanted by no one outside the UCP caucus and some Australian billionaires that continue to dog the government.
Needless to say, this is another example of how seriously we should take Premier Smith when she claims, as she did last week, “in Alberta we believe in free speech. Full stop.”
Full disclosure: The author of this post is a former member and chair of the St. Albert Public Library Board.
Rope the “bad books” off. Stick a huge honking sign on the rope that says, “The Government Does Not Want You To Read These Books. Please Ask Librarian for Access”
I guarantee that library and that section will be the most popular place in town.
Any kid who wasn’t allowed access to the Adult Section before age 12 will tell you that.
The replacement costs for the books there will skyrocket as they disappear into backpacks and smuggled out under hoodies. Best to stick a nickle jar at the checkout to fundraise for the added costs. It’ll be the best funded part of the library.
There is a library starting a banned book club. Only requirement to participate is that you have read the book. Would couple nicely with the banned book section you suggested.
Ah the Streisand effect in action. I remember reading that Montreal cinema owners prayed for the banner headline “Banned in Toronto!”
@John Caine
Dunno if you remember the Mary And Jesus Chain.
Punk band nobody heard of here until they got a gig in Downtown Toronto. Catholic Church set up a boycott over their name and their few tickets got turned into a full house with a lineup around the block and an added show, if I recall correctly.
I remember the Catholic Church’s banned books list. All the non-Catholic kids were lending them copies. Nothing like telling a kid they can’t have something to make them want it.
This won’t end well.
Rural Albertans are proud of their willful ignorance.
How hypocritical of the UCP. Dan Williams was in the Alberta Legislature, and during a Legislature session, he was drinking a can of beer. Children could be present with their teacher seeing that. This isn’t anything more than the UCP trying to turn people’s attention away from the corruption and abysmal governance of the UCP.
Libraries should simply ignore the government legislation, in much the same way that Danielle Smith regularly ignores the Canada Health Act.
However, books that praise and promote public and workplace drinking are A-Ok.
Perhaps “obnoxious compliance”?
Have ever person entering the library have to show photo age ID to a library staff member standing in front of a sigh that says “Age verification required by the UCP’s and their Bill 28”.
Additionally, immediately next to this checkpoint is a computer cued up to send a letter to the Premier, the
minister, the Library’s social media and the press.
Wouldn’t it be a grand gesture if the book with the incest (Genesis 19, verse 30 to 36) was the one and only book that all the libraries put on their restricted list with option 1. Maybe throw in all of the books on biology as well as there is a lot of procreating going on in those books. Force Smith’s hand.
A casual reading of something about Abraham–I have no idea where in the bible–suggests that he was an incestuous pimp. Ban that book!
It never ceases to amaze what low levels the UCP will stoop to, just to get the focus away from their failures and really stupid ideas.
While extrapolated the cost of this to all libraries will probably exceed a million dollars, which could be put to way better use in health care, patching potholes on highways or a whole host of other things that would be more beneficial to Albertans.
There is another option: samizdat. Someone can post the books on the internet. Someone can make copies and circulate them. Censorship is as old as Methuselah, and so are the ways to circumvent it. The word samizdat is Russian, it means self-publishing, and it comes from thecdays of Soviet censorship. The concept is also completely non-violent. We need to rid ourselves of the illusion that we live in a free society and act accordingly.
I’ll take the banned books, please.
time to start memorizing them.
Fahrenheit 451.
jfc!
Many banned books in the USSR were secretly propagated by a sort of underground library system. One could borrow a banned book by agreeing to return it along with a handwritten copy called a “Samazdat.” Many of these works were in foreign languages so also had to be translated first. Thus, like the ancient tradition of memorization, there were inevitable mistakes or licences to edit or change the original.
Soon after the Soviet collapse, many banned books began to resurface that had been hidden away for the seven decades by families’ grandparents and great grandparents—including many examples of Samazdat that were subsequently propagated on the QT.
This contingency had already been practiced for a centuries by Eastern Orthodox “Old Believers” who, after the mid-15th century Patriarch of Moscow reformed liturgical practice, had to follow their old rituals in secret when he officially anathematized them.
Of course even the new liturgy had to be hidden away from Soviet authorities as well, and make up the bulk of resurfaced books after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. One imagines old dictionaries are required to “translate” the classical style of Russian the communists eliminated as “too bourgeois.” In order to achieve the central committee’s first five-year plan of 99% literacy fully half (!) the large, pre-Soviet lexicon (comparable in size to that of english) was eliminated— not that most Russians, previously 99% illiterate, would find anything amiss—, the Cyrillic alphabet was reduced by quite a number of letters, and grammar simplified and made absolutely regular —‘no exceptions, comrade!’
The UCP’s book ban looks comparatively pretty mickey-mouse in an era of broad literacy (which, these days, doesn’t necessarily mean ‘reasonable’ or ‘knowledgeable’), ubiquitous internet and printers but, as DJC reminds, it still presents a substantial cost to libraries and the public.
Perhaps every library in Alberta should hang a print of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica in its entrance. They could then explain what it means to anyone who asks. Are we there yet?
I don’t hear so well anymore so when I ask my darling what she needs from the store, she puts her hearing aids in, makes me repeat, writes her list on a piece of notepaper and sends me off. But today I asked her in what book the story of Tamar is written.
Of course I have to do everything, she having been raised a strict atheist (her father told me that his mother once secretly sneaked him into the tiny Saskatchewan synagogue when he was a little boy so his convinced communist father wouldn’t know, her motive a contingency, I suppose —“just in case…”), making me the dubious theologian in our family.
For some reason my oldest memories are sharper than my newest these days, so I recalled how once, long ago, if I needed a reference I simply yanked on my dog’s ear, thumbed towards the kitchen bookshelf with the clear command to go fetch, say, the “KJV.” He’d never say anything back but typically would bring me The Joy of Cooking or the Concise OED, the only other two tomes sagging our modest kitchen stacks, but rarely ever the one I wanted. Old Roscoe’s gone now so I still have to do everything myself.
One of the many hats my darling used to wear, long before we met, was that of school librarian —which is why I thought I’d engage her about this UCP censorship business.
“Who?”
“Tamar—in the Bible?”
“Uh…”
“Alberta?”
“—uh, uh-huh…”
“UCP censoring libary books?”
“Yes, dear…[not in a tone the least bit curious or interested—didn;t even correct my “libary” reference]…”
So, to avoid getting up to fetch the KJV myself, I instead quoted from the Book of Wiki, just as I was asking myself, Why the hell would I expect her to know anything about the Bible?
The story is from Genesis (chapter 38) which, along with many other Books of the Bible, is replete with some pretty kinky stuff about which one would expect puritanical True Believers to take exception. Like, how Adam, the world’s first special-purpose field-hand, was presented with each animal of Godetal’s creation, ostensibly to give them names, but the Creator concluded that no suitable mate for Adam could be found among them. Before assigning euphemisms for such a conclusion—that is, for whatever Adam had to be doing besides inventing the first Dewey taxonomy—recall that for lack of a suitable mate Adam had to involuntarily and unconsciously part with a small bone so a transgendered mate could be modelled by the Masters’ hands (no offence to Tommy Hunter, Canada’s “Country Gentleman,” d. July 2, 2026, who covered Mary Brooks Welch’s song “The Touch of the Master’s Hand” to close each episode of his long running TV show) and that upon first meeting his sister-clone Adam enthusiastically saluted her with “bone of my bones!” The otherwise sullen dope spake a rather prophetic, Flip-Wilsonesque, “The wife made me do it,” which, come to think of it, could be the source of Danielle Smith’s tactic of blaming others for her own deceit.
Indeed, deception carves a serpentine trail throughout the Good Book, from Cain’s, ‘I won’t keep you long, Bra,’ to Noah’s, ‘Grape seedsh were in the -hic!- ark’sh care-packash -hic!-, honesht they were,’ to Abraham’s lie that his wife, Sarah, was his sister so King Ambimelech could have his way with her, &c. But all I remembered of Tamar was that there was something salacious but sagacious about her. Reciting the story synopsis to my darling as she rattled the pots and pans louder and louder, I was soon reminded that Tamar, disguised as a prostitute, beguiled her unwitting (drunken) father-in-law, Judah, into impregnating her (as Lot’s daughters had done to their own father ) in order his bequeathment inhered to the resulting two sons.
However, to ensure the inheritance fell entirely to Judah’s first son, Tamar’s first husband, Er committed the cardinal sin of seed-wastage—coitus interruptus—to preclude any issue before the old man died. Godetal killed him therefore. Tamar was given to the next youngest brother, Onan, who likewise tarried about producing offspring. And, verily, Godetal killed him too. Luckily for Judah’s youngest son, Shelah was too young to marry Tamar so, to prevent the old man dying intestate—that is, before Shelah was old enough to marry (the now twice-widowed Tamar, being otherwise ineligible as heir)—, she tricked the old man into putting her in a motherly way.
Tamar might not have been the greatest-of-all-time seductresses in the Bible, but there was a goat, the agreed price for her service. In lieu of immediate payment she took as surety Judah’s distinctive staff, mantle, and sash so when Judah later demanded the court sentence her to the burning stake after hearing she was pregnant, she admitted evidence to show it was he who, if I may risk being banned from Alberta libraries, put the biscuits in her basket. Two sons were born heirs to Judah’s wealth and ancestors to the House of David.
As my darling set a Spanish frittata before me she finally said, “Oh, ‘TA´mar”— I thought you said “EE´mar.”
“Couldn’t you tell by the story—,”
“—I was in the Tamar Chapter of the BBG, the B’nai B’rith Girls, y’know [rebel that she was]. I still have the little red cap with “TAMAR” embroidered on it.”
“Haven’t you been listening to anything I said?”
“—AND, I was a Daughter of Job, too—[singing] ‘Behold, behold/ We are the daughters of Job/ &c'” Covering both Jewish and Christian bases, I suppose, “just in case…”
“Well, don’t you think it’s hypocritical of the UCP to ban books they deem inappropriate when many books of the Bible are just as –uh–, you know—ahem!–just as–uh–racy?”
She hands me a note, “You didn’t hear what I said, did you. I’ll be needing this sooner than later…”
It read: GREEK YOGURT, 2%, BLUEBERRIES
So I didn’t bother asking her what the name of that movie was. The one with Sean Connery in the monastery? The one with the forbidden library? The one a former librarian might be interested in? Gall!—I’m just so bad at names.
Oh, well, maybe it’ll occur to me later. Right now I have to go to the store for–uh–[checking note] yogurt, blueberries, and milk. But, dang!—it’s right on the tip of my tongue.
Was it “The Name of the Wild Rose” by any chance?
It’ll come to me sooner or later.
@Scotty,
A fine piece of writing, sir!
(and a very fun read)
When will we start living again? Getting rid of all this black plague is not an easy job. Well in Toronto they have started with a petition with 30 thousand signatures to get rid of that idiot American ambassador that should never have been accepted in Canadian territory. He was born in the right country for him and the timing was excellent because him and Trump are now the biggest joke in our great country. By the way Mark Carney, no concessions to these stinky human beings. We can take them anytime. Let us not capitulate now.
Why do books scare dictatorships? Is it the ideas they contain, or just the fact that, they want total control?