Alberta Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides announced what he called a balanced province-wide standard to ensure school library materials are age-appropriate and free of sexually explicit content. 

The standards will apply to all public, separate, Francophone, charter, and independent schools, but not to the 55 municipal public libraries located in school buildings or to learning and teaching resources selected for use by teachers to support curriculum.

School boards must also regularly review their school library collections, publish a full list of all available materials and ensure that a staff member supervises student access to school library materials. Any material with explicit sexual content must be removed from library shelves by Oct. 1, 2025, a date that was pushed back from the originally announced deadline.

Nicole Buchanan, chair of Red Deer Public Schools, and Blaine Badiuk, an education and LGBTQ advocate, were alongside the minister for the announcement.

“This is an important step because, and I can’t stress this enough, until now, Alberta schools had zero standards for selecting age-appropriate books for libraries,” Nicolaides said. 

Under the new standards, school libraries are not permitted to include material containing explicit sexual content. Non-explicit sexual content may be accessed by students in Grades 10 and above, provided it is age-appropriate, the minister said.

“We had originally planned for a September 1 implementation date, (but) our school boards, of course, raised a very valid objection, which was that they just won’t have the time and ability as everyone’s adjourned for summer and gone for the summer. So that was very reasonable,” Nicolaides said.

Buchanan said that throughout the process, there has been “conversation and consultation” with school boards.

“The initial date was specified for September. 1, multiple school board chairs stated that that was not enough time, as the Minister stated, that has been extended to October 1,” she said.

“Also, the minister has said, if school boards find that it is not enough time, the ministry is willing to work with school boards to do what’s right for students, to get these materials, ultimately right within our schools.”

All Alberta school boards must have publicly available policies that align with the new standards for selecting and managing materials by Jan. 1, 2026. According to the minister, school boards can either create new policies or update existing policies to meet these new requirements.

Policies will outline how school library materials are selected and reviewed, how staff will supervise student access throughout the day and how a student, parent, school board, employee or other member of the school community can request a review or removal of materials in a school library.

The announcement follows the May 26 announcement, where Nicolaides provided examples of books with “sexually explicit” content found in school libraries across the province and shared intention on creating guidelines. 

An online survey created for Albertans to “provide feedback on the creation of consistent standards to ensure the age appropriateness of materials available to students in school libraries” was open from May 26 to June 6 and received 80,000 responses. 

Nicolaides shared that parents of school-aged children were the largest group of survey respondents, making up almost half of the total number of responses. Of the nearly 40,000 parents who took the survey, 41 per cent said children should never have access to sexually explicit content in school libraries, 22 per cent said that sexually explicit content should only be available in grades 10 and up, 23 per cent said school librarians should decide which materials are age appropriate and 19 per cent said it should be parents. 

Despite the spread of responses, the minister said he firmly believes that his government has taken an approach that “strikes the right balance.”

“We believe that students should be curious, inquisitive and exploratory about their world without encountering sexually explicit content in school libraries,” Nicolaides said.

“The standards we’ve created provide clear, consistent guidance on appropriate sexual content for school libraries, while keeping school boards, librarians and teachers in charge of selecting and managing library materials.”

LGBTQ advocate says new guidelines are non-discriminatory 

As a member of the LGBTQ community, Badiuk said she was “utterly shocked” when the images were first shared of the content. 

“I thought it was really important that this policy come forward and I was very disappointed that some people chose to label this as a witch hunt and say this is anti-LGBTQ. It is just simply the opposite,” she said.

Badiuk said she understands this is a “charged” topic and wanted to be clear about “what this policy is and what this policy is not.”

“This policy is about ensuring children are not exposed to inappropriate sexual content. It is not about erasing LGBTQ stories, and it is not about banning books that have LGBTQ themes.”

Badiuk called the announcement a balanced policy that ensures children are not exposed to inappropriate images.

“LGBTQ youth deserve to see themselves reflected in stories that affirm their identities and experiences. To suggest that such representation must include sexual content is not only false, it’s a disservice to the LGBTQ community. It sends the wrong message for a teenager who may be questioning their gender identity or sexual orientation,” she said.

“Representation matters, but it must be age-appropriate.”

Badiuk had no direct involvement in the creation of the ministerial order. 

Badiuk said that non-sexual identity-affirming stories are critical for helping LGBTQ youth understand who they are without confusion, pressure or exposure to content that “they are not ready for.”

She said that calling these guidelines anti-LGBTQ distracts from the real needs of these youth and “many LGBTQ adults support policies like this.”

“We want LGBT youth to grow into confident, healthy adults that starts with allowing them to be kids first, free from adult decisions and adult material until they are ready,” she said.