There’s never a bad time for a scandal-ridden right-wing government like Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP) to try to gin up a moral panic over books with dirty pictures in school libraries.
But with the province’s auditor general asking for and receiving permission from the Alberta Court of Appeal to act as an intervenor in the lawsuit at the heart of a burgeoning corruption scandal, a measles epidemic running out of control in the province’s conservative heartland while the government pretends nothing is happening, and other political calamities bedevilling the UCP, the discovery of some books with unsuitable pictures in school libraries had obvious utility.
Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides called a news conference to break the news that “there have been multiple books found in some school libraries across the province that show extremely graphic and age-inappropriate content.”
While the minister was vague about the parents he said alerted him to the existence of the offending books—he cited four examples while hinting that there were many more—one has to wonder if social conservative activists have been scouring school libraries looking for things to be outraged about and were lucky enough to find a few.
A few images from the four graphic novels named in the news release have been published on the government’s official website—so don’t get caught going to Alberta.ca on your work computer, even if you work for the Alberta government! A couple are pretty racy.
Nevertheless, it’s said here, there’s not enough in the examples published by the government to qualify for a full-blown culture war, if readers will forgive the expression. This is probably something that could have been handled with a private email to the school administrations.
Nothing of the sort was done, of course. Edmonton and Calgary school trustees published a joint statement pointing out that Nicolaides’ racy revelations were a “complete surprise” and expressing dismay at the minister’s implication they do not “follow established, rigorous processes to ensure that library resources are age-appropriate and relevant for students.”
But why let a crisis go to waste, even if it isn’t much of a crisis, when you can use it for pre-election push polling on the public dime? Accordingly, Nicolaides’ announcement included a 13-question survey designed to elicit the opinions the government wants in favour of its planned policy.
Including naughty pictures with a government survey is an interesting public engagement concept. One wonders if the government will pay the artists for the use of their copyrighted material?
It’s telling, one suspects, that most the books mentioned in the news release had 2SLGBTQIA+ themes. “It seems like there is no coincidence that the government’s announcement on library materials specifically singled out 2SLGBTQIA+ materials,” Alberta Teachers Association President Jason Schilling said in a news release emailed to media.
Nicolaides explained the survey as “a public engagement to collect feedback on the creation of consistent standards to ensure the age-appropriateness of materials available to students in school libraries.”
So, asked a reporter, there will be a province-wide ban on such books in school libraries? “This is not a question of banning specific books or specific titles but rather establishing clear policies and guidelines for all school divisions to follow,” Nicolaides said. Nevertheless, call it a ban or call it a policy, some books will certainly disappear from the shelves of school libraries.
So what about the Bible? A smart-aleck journalist wondered. Suffice it to say, the Bible will remain in Alberta schools, Song of Solomon, Lot’s daughters, frequent smiting, and all.
Nicolaides also insisted that 2SLGBTQIA+ content would not be prohibited as a class of literature.
If there was a book on astrophysics that had graphic sexual content, I would have the exact same concerns. (Having grown up in the home of an astrophysicist, I can assure the minister that the Belt of Orion remains tightly fastened, even if one of the stars in question is actually a sextuple.)
Public libraries that share space with schools will not be affected, the education minister promised—although Albertans shouldn’t be too confident that public libraries won’t be next if the UCP moral panic campaign manages to gain some traction. Public libraries are already under assault in Alberta and throughout North America and efforts to defund them often seem to have 2SLGBTQIA+ rights issues at their heart.
None of the reporters asked what role the disappearance of school librarians due to government underfunding of education played in this situation. However, the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) addressed that in its release. “Due to decades of education underfunding, school libraries are rarely staffed by certificated professional librarians or, preferably, teacher—librarians, who can help identify and develop guiding principles for the selection of appropriate materials,” the teachers’ union said.
The ATA urged the government to “engage in meaningful and broad consultation with librarians, teachers, students and families—including those from 2SLGBTQIA+ communities—and provide targeted and stable funding to restore teacher—librarians in Alberta schools.”
The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which represents school support workers who recently struck several school districts before reaching a satisfactory settlement, took a harsher line: Instead of waging “dubious culture wars” to distract from the underfunding of education, CUPE Local 3550 President Mandy Lamoureux told The Canadian Press,
the government should talk to parents, who will tell them book censorship does nothing to solve the real issues students face.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Alberta Auditor General Doug Wylie sought and got the nod from the Alberta Court of Appeal to act as an intervenor in the wrongful-dismissal lawsuit brought by former Alberta Health Services (AHS) CEO Athana Mentzelopoulis in which she alleges managers were pressured to accept dodgy contracts by senior government officials.
The court said participation by the auditor general will be limited to two specific issues. Still, whatever they are, this cannot be good news for the government if only because it keeps the roiling issue before the public.
At the same time, the spread of measles in Alberta is clearly out of control while the government of Premier Danielle Smith, a longtime vaccine skeptic and enthusiast for quack medical treatments, does little to stop the spread.
Reported cases of the highly infectious disease in Alberta since early March had surpassed 600. In the United States, itself no paragon of public health delivery, the Centers for Disease Control last reported on May 23 that there had been 1,046 reported cases in the entire country of 340 million souls.
The outbreak is so severe in Alberta Health Services’ South Zone, where there have now been 452 cases reported, that AHS issued a public statement warning that “anyone in the South Zone who was born in or after 1970 and has fewer than two documented doses of measles-containing vaccine, is at risk for developing measles.”
Alberta Friends of Medicare Executive Director Chris Gallaway said that “this should be an all-hands-on deck situation.” He asked:
Where is the interim Chief Medical Officer of Health? Where is the minister? Why aren’t Albertans hearing from them?