Last August, the Edmonton Public School Board began removing books from school libraries as it reviewed current materials to comply with new provincial guidelines on sexual content.
Parents, students, and teachers began sharing posts shortly after claiming that the Alberta Government was banning books.
Some social media commentary and political punditry made it seem as if hundreds of books were being pulled from school library shelves.
The Calgary Journal set out to investigate how many books were actually pulled from library shelves and claims made on social media.
The social media claims
Claims circulating online and in public discourse stated that the UCP government’s “sweeping order” led to the removal of “200 books.”
“This is nothing but a knee-jerk reaction to a few religious nuts,” says atagoodclip on Reddit. “Sounds a little like a Christian Nationalist thing. There is no way that this is an issue with by far the majority of Albertans.”
Many drew parallels between what was happening in Alberta last fall and book bans in the U.S.
Justwhytry on Reddit charged, “The Alberta government has failed. The time for change is now, or else we will be in the same boat as the U.S. The UCP took the reins and is bound and determined to never lose control of Alberta again.”
One political commentator highlighted that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, whom Danielle Smith has praised in the past, has banned more than 700 books from public schools in his southern state.
Similarly, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives argued that what’s happening in Alberta mirrors “U.S. movements that have long opposed LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools under the banner of parental rights.”
The Edmonton School Board actually initially proposed removing more than 200 books from its schools’ shelves.
The UCP government’s direction to school boards
In the spring of 2025, the Alberta government issued controversial new policies directing school boards to review school library materials that may contain written or visual depictions of sexual acts.
“As a parent, it is extremely concerning to find out that books explicitly depicting sexual acts are available to students in some school libraries,” said Minister of Education and Childcare Demetrios Nicolaides when announcing plans to study whether new rules were needed for school libraries.
“We are going to do something about this serious issue by consulting Albertans and creating standards to ensure students do not have access to age-inappropriate materials in school libraries,” Nicoladies stated.
The initial directive required schools to remove these books last fall, though officials said the policy was not intended to remove classic or age-appropriate literature.
Following public backlash and confusion last year, the government revised the policy to focus primarily on visual depictions of sexual content rather than including written content, narrowing the scope.
A review of the archived government webpage shows that the earlier version of the policy, dated July 2025, contained more details about the government’s intentions than the current version does.
This is one of many factors contributing to public uncertainty.
The initial policy led the Edmonton Public Schools to remove more than 200 books, both graphic novels and written works, including The Handmaid’s Tale, Brave New World, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, during internal compliance reviews.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith bristled at the provincial capital school district’s list, calling it “vicious compliance,” while stressing that the point of the new rules was to keep graphic, sexually explicit content out of schools from K-12.
Other Alberta school boards did not suggest removing as many books.
The evidence
The evidence does not support social media claims of widespread or permanent book banning in Alberta schools.
New government records show that only a limited number of books were removed.
Still, the governing UCP’s policy sparked national outrage.
Famed Canadian writer Margaret Atwood blasted Alberta’s controversial ban, even penning a satirical short story about the policy.
Last fall, the province paused its controversial order amid the backlash.
New rules published weeks later narrowed the book ban to only graphic depictions of sexual acts.
That resulted in far fewer books being pulled from shelves.
Edmonton Public Schools, for instance, confirmed that many books were returned after review, and shortly after, the government halted the new policy to refine its wording.
Still, the controversy continued.
British Columbian librarian Shannon Ozirny told CBC News that the governing UCP is addressing a problem that simply doesn’t exist.
Since the policy took effect, Edmonton Public Schools has removed 33 titles, and the Calgary Board of Education has removed 44 titles from its library collections, which together hold more than 3 million books.
Many of the books removed were award-winning titles that had previously passed publisher, educator, and library review processes.
The Orchard, a news site offering news analysis from an unabashedly progressive perspective, published the list of banned books.
The governing UCP, for its part, has not made public a list of books pulled from library shelves, contributing to ongoing speculation.
Most of the books on the list published by the Orchard are graphic novels about LGBTQ+ and transgender topics, with a few small exceptions. Of all the titles on both lists, only seven appear on both.
Not as many books get pulled from school libraries in the end
The social media claims that Alberta banned a swath of books lacks evidence.
But the UCP’s policy did result in a few dozen books being pulled from school libraries across the province.
After the Calgary Journal published this story, CBC News, based on a freedom of information request, reported that schools across the province “
removed at least 166 titles, most of them graphic novels, from shelves.”A spokesperson for Alberta’s Education ministry told the public broadcaster that the order protects children from graphic images.
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