The Alberta government has finalized province-wide standards to eliminate and protect children from sexually explicit content in school libraries, giving school authorities until October to comply with the new rules.
Under a new Ministerial Order announced Thursday, school boards will be prohibited from offering any materials containing “a detailed and clear depiction of a sexual act” and must begin purging their collections by this fall.
Such depictions include masturbation, genital contact, and penetration.
“School libraries should be safe and supportive places where students can learn and explore without being exposed to inappropriate sexual content,” reads a Thursday news release.
Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all K–12 school libraries must remove books with explicit sexual content. By Jan. 1, 2026, the rest of the new standards—including policy changes and parental access to material lists—must also be in place.
“Our actions to ensure that materials in school libraries don’t expose children to sexual content were never about banning books,” said Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides. “These new standards are to ensure that school boards have clear guidance to ensure age-appropriate access to school library materials, while reflecting the values and priorities of Albertans.”
He added that the provincial government does not have the direct authority to direct a school board to remove any particular book.
The updated rules come after the province first started pushing back against books containing pornographic imagery in May.
The initial pushback followed the province discovering that graphic novels such as Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and Flamer by Mike Curato were available in schools for children as young as kindergarten age.
Nicolaides said that even Kobabe acknowledged that her book should not be available to children.
The Alberta UCP also blasted the provincial NDP for defending pornographic content in Alberta school libraries.
The government, however, says the policy was shaped by public opinion, including an online survey completed by nearly 80,000 Albertans between May 26 and June 6 and input from key education stakeholders.
Nicolaides revealed that almost half of the respondents were parents of school-aged children. Over four-in-ten (41 per cent) of them said children should never have access to sexually explicit content in school libraries, while 22 per cent said it should be available in Grade 10 and up.
The rules apply to all public, separate, Francophone, charter, and independent schools, but not to municipal libraries or teacher-assigned classroom materials. Religious texts or scriptures are also excluded.
“Protecting kids from explicit content is common sense,” said Blaine Badiuk, a transgender advocate. “LGBTQ youth, like all children, deserve to see themselves in stories that are age-appropriate, supportive and affirming – not in material that sexualizes or confuses them.”
Badiuk said that any claims that the legislation was discriminatory distracted from the real needs of youth.
According to the new Ministerial Order, students in Grade 9 and below cannot access school library books with even non-explicit sexual content. Students in Grades 10 to 12 may only access such material if it is “developmentally appropriate.”
Non-explicit sexual content is defined as “a depiction of sexual acts that is not detailed or clear.”
Some types of content that are not considered sexual include content related to medical procedures and conditions, content related to biological functions, and encyclopedias. Content including kissing, hugging, and handholding is also permitted.
A chair of Red Deer Public Schools, Nicole Buchanan, also celebrated the change.
“If a passage or image isn’t appropriate for the front page of a newspaper or a billboard on the side of the highway, then it shouldn’t be available to students in K-12 learning environments,” she said.
“Some students in our schools may be of the provincial age to consume [alcohol and tobacco], but that doesn’t mean that we put them in our vending machines,” she added. “Explicit sexual content should be viewed the same way.”
School boards will be required to maintain a list of library materials accessible to parents, ensure staff supervision of student access, and respond to requests for information from the ministry.
School authorities will be required to have policies and procedures covering criteria for selecting school library materials, a review process, staff supervising access to library materials, and a process to request a review of any specific library material.
The authority policies put forward by the schools must be publicly available and communicated to employees, children, students, and parents.
A ministerial order mandating full compliance will take effect in two phases over the next six months.
Nicolaides said he expects all school boards to follow through with the changes. In his two years as education minister, he said no school board has openly defied a government order and it is not clear the levers at his disposal if enforcement is required.