More than 170 books were removed from Alberta school libraries this school year.
New literary material standards introduced by Alberta’s government in 2025 prohibit K-12 libraries from stocking books containing “any explicit visual depiction of a sexual act” as defined by a ministerial order from the province’s education minister. The order itself doesn’t ban any specific books. Instead, school authorities were required to review their library collections and decide whether a book met the education ministry’s definitions of inappropriate content, and report back to the government which books had been removed to comply with the order.
