Moral panic! UCP book ban explodes as government on brink of major labour dispute with Alberta's teachers
It’s been 23 years since the last wide-spread teachers strike in Alberta
Summer is coming to an end. Labour Day is just behind us and students are heading back to school. But it looks like Alberta teachers and the United Conservative Party government are on the brink of a major labour dispute.
It’s been 23 years since the last wide-spread teachers strike in Alberta and the impasse at the bargaining table has increased the possibility of another major job action.
It almost certainly hasn’t helped that Minister of Education and Childcare Demetrios Nicolaides and Minister of Finance Nate Horner have continually publicly admonished the Alberta Teachers’ Association for wanting to engage in collective bargaining at the bargaining table instead of just accepting the government’s offer.
“To retain and attract teachers in the profession, we need to address their issues in the classroom, but we also need to address their salary,” said ATA President Jason Schilling. “They’re not asking for the moon. They’re asking to keep up with inflation in this province.”
Teachers voted to reject a mediator’s recommendation for a settlement earlier this year and then overwhelmingly voted in favour of giving the ATA the authority to call a strike.
The Teachers' Employer Bargaining Association has applied to the Labour Relations Board for the power to lock teachers out of schools, a common tactic used by some employers during labour disputes, though in this case one that would make the government look not great.
While we should all hope that a deal acceptable to both sides can be hammered out at the bargaining table and major job disruptions can be avoided, there is not much goodwill between teachers and the UCP government right now — and it’s not hard to figure out why.
Nicolaides has dedicated a considerable amount of his time trying to create moral panic about sexually explicit books and pornography in school libraries. When four LGBTQ-themed books with inappropriate sexual content were discovered in some school libraries in Calgary and Edmonton, Nicolaides and Premier Danielle Smith pounced on the political opportunity.
Nicolaides and Smith didn’t do what a sensible government interested in good governance would do, like reach out to the school boards to request the books be reviewed or removed, or provide additional funding to hire more teacher-librarians so school library collections are actually properly curated.
Nope.
Instead, they did the most in-character thing. Nicolaides and Smith leapt at the chance to inject yet another American-inspired culture war surge into Alberta politics. They hosted press conferences, published NSFW links in press releases and on social media highlighting the lewd material, and posted videos online repeating talking points designed to inflame four books into a big scary morality crisis.
It was revealed soon after that the inappropriate books were not brought to the attention of the government by random concerned parents, as the public was initially led to believe. It was groups like the socially conservative UCP-aligned Parents for Choice in Education that were pushing for the four books to be banned. The group is run by former Wildrose Party president and candidate John Hilton-O’Brien, and its board includes former Drayton Valley-Devon UCP MLA Mark Smith and Reverend Brian Caldwell.
Edmonton Public Schools responded to Nicolaides with a long list of books they say will be removed from school library bookshelves in order to comply with his heavy-handed ministerial order. Banned books on the list include Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, George Orwell’s “1984”, Ayn Rand‘s “Atlas Shrugged”, and books by Alice Munro.
The ban caught the attention of Atwood, who penned a satirical story about Alberta in response that caught the attention of the international media.
Smith responded to the school board’s list by describing it as “vicious compliance,” but board chair Julie Kusiek reiterated to CBC that the books are being removed as a result of the Nicolaides’ ministerial order. Kusiek said the board shares concerns raised by community members and opposed the policy but this is a result of the UCP government’s actions.
“Whoever hasn't read the book banning order needs to,” Edmonton lawyer Orlagh O’Kelly wrote on social media.
“Section 2.a is a blanket prohibition on books with explicit sexual content, which includes "written passages for any student of any age,” O’Kelly wrote. “This is how we get to banning the Hands Maid Tale et al.”
The additional workload created by another section of Nicolaides’ ministerial order requiring schools to create a publicly available lists of all library material has led some teachers to just block off book shelves in classrooms and at least one school in the City of Lacombe to give away its library books for free before the start of the school year.
Like so much of Smith’s political agenda, this feels and looks a lot like what is happening south of the border. The government run by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a politician Smith has said she admires, has banned more than 700 books from public school libraries in that state.
This attempt to create a moral panic about pornography in schools almost certainly has strong support among UCP MLAs and will play well for the enthusiastic far-right convoy of party supporters who will pour into the Edmonton Expo Centre at the UCP AGM in November. And that, along with the UCP’s very healthy fundraising efforts, is the key to Smith’s political success. As long as she keeps her MLAs and party members happy, and her party’s coffers full, her position as Premier is secure (at least until the next election).
But that doesn’t change the fact that the book ban panic started as a fake emergency about four books.
It’s extremely outdated and weird to think that school age kids in the year 2025 would look to school libraries to access pornography or inappropriate sexual material. Many kids have access to the internet through the smartphones they or their friends carry around 24 hours a day. Those are the smartphones their parents bought them.
But this issue has been enthusiastically embraced by a UCP government that will almost certainly turn its attention next to the books on the shelves of public libraries in our province.
Just like Smith made a big show of banning transgender youth athletes from school sports (girls trying out for sports teams this fall will now need their parents to sign a form vouching that they were assigned female at birth) and transport minister Devin Dreeshen threatened to demolish bike lanes and municipal affairs minister Dan Williams complained about woke snow plows, this is just another big distraction from the UCP’s destructive overhauling, restructuring and privatizing of education, health care and public services.
With Nicolaides and Smith focusing on pushing their book ban and scolding local school trustees, and Alberta teachers possibly hitting the picket lines this fall, parents and families could be scrambling to figure out what to do with their kids during a strike.
If parents and their kids aren’t able join a picket line to show support for their teachers, maybe they could start a book club — the Edmonton Public School Board already has a list.
More Alberta politics
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