Alberta's Book Ban Controversy

Late last week - a list of over 200 books, set to be removed from Edmonton school libraries by October made the rounds online. It was in response to an order set out by Alberta’s education ministry in July to take books with sexually explicit content from the shelves.

This applied from kindergarten to Grade 12.

On that list? Award-winning works like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

Intense criticism from writers, educators, civil liberties groups followed and on Tuesday the Alberta government paused the order and announced that they’re reworking it.

The Investigative Journalism Foundation’s Brett McKay has been covering this push to remove sexually explicit content from school libraries in Alberta. He’s here to talk about the politics behind it, the uproar that ensued and how all this mirrors similar efforts to ban books in the U.S.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts