After a messy launch in late August, the UCP have tightened the official scope of their book ban—according to them, back to the graphic novels they initially said they wanted to keep out of school libraries.

But the goalposts may shift again soon enough, as the ministerial order as written doesn’t even seem to apply to the texts that the UCP have declared as their targets.

Education minister Demetrios Nicolaides’ order on July 4th which declared a ban on sexual content in books in schools by October 1 was the provincial government’s first official step into a culture war over access to queer and sex-ed materials that was already being pursued by groups like Parents For Choice in Education and Action4Canada and fought in other venues, like in Valleyview, where activists associated with UCP MLA Todd Loewen have been agitating against the local library’s gay-straight alliance club.

Nicolaides’ announcement drew expected criticism for its obvious targeting of queer content, but what really appears to have kept it from sticking is that the first order was so loosely defined that it would ban uncontroversial texts ranging from 1984 to A Handmaid’s Tale. When the Edmonton Public School Board applied the rules as written, and announced their removal list would include even right-wing favourite Atlas Shrugged, Premier Smith decried their “malicious compliance” and sent the list back to Nicolaides for revision.

Nicolaides returned with a tighter definition on Monday that reduced the scope of the ban to graphic novels and books with illustrations. Nothing text-only is in the crosshairs now, which is a dramatic walk-back of the initial policy.

Conveniently for the UCP, this returns the target back to the texts that the right-wing pressure groups were demanding they ban in the first place. The UCP cites Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Blankets by Craig Thompson and Flamer by Mike Curato as examples of what they want kept away from children.

But Nicolaides may have to return to the drawing-board again if that’s his goal. According to the new ministerial order, only visual depictions of “sexual acts” are banned, which the ministerial order defines as not including 

“an activity or action that is not distinctly sexual in nature, such as physical contact related to medical conditions, examinations or treatment, actions or activities related to biological functions or processes like puberty, menstruation, pregnancy or breastfeeding, or actions or activities that may be related to sexual acts, such as kissing or handholding.”

By that definition, even the texts on the activist-supplied target list don’t all qualify to be banned. And as political scientist Duane Bratt pointed out online, those texts weren’t broadly available in elementary schools, as Nicolaides had claimed to justify his policy—for the most part they were only available in middle or high schools, and even usually only used as texts in literature study classes, which the ministerial order specifically sets aside as allowed.

All of this adds up to a present situation that’s unlikely to satisfy anyone. The activists in the UCP base pushing for the book bans aren’t getting what they want, and outside of that set, banning books at all is deeply unpopular.

The enforcement date for the ban has been pushed back to January 6th. Expect more campaigning on it from the UCP, and perhaps another attempt at a revision from Nicolaides, before we get there.

Sundries

• Negotiations between the Alberta government and the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) have hit a wall, the government has escalated by securing authority to lock teachers out, and on Wednesday the ATA announced they intend to strike on October 6th unless the government meets their demands. Communications from finance minister Nate Horner make it clear that the government insists on sticking teachers with the same 12 per cent over 4 years deal that has become the government’s standard offer to unions in negotiations this year. The Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL), who have been organizing all summer through their Common Front campaign, say that if the teachers strike the AFL will support the picket.
  
  
• Negotiations between the Alberta government and the Alberta Union of Public Employees (AUPE) have somewhat unexpectedly un-walled, with AUPE, who voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike in May, now voting 63 per cent to 31 per cent to accept a government offer. For most AUPE members, that offer is again that 12 per cent over 4 years line the government has pressed in all negotiations, although some members will be receiving wage adjustments or other measures while others are just getting the flat 12.
  
  AUPE president Guy Smith told me in an interview on Monday that 63 per cent isn’t unusually low for a ratification vote on a collective agreement, but 31 per cent disagreement certainly looks fraught to me. Other sources have told me that at least two AUPE vice presidents are gearing up to challenge Smith for the presidency—perhaps we’ll get a better sense of the membership's opinion on the agreement when we see votes there.
  
  
• One set of AUPE members is in a more adversarial position this week—the workers in Coaldale, 43 of whom are presently locked out by the municipal government. Reps from the municipality have been prosecuting this fight in media rather than at the bargaining table, which does not bode well for any early or amicable resolution.
  
• Prime Minister Mark Carney is taking some steps to address the canola-EV trade war that has pit the interests of manufacturing workers out east against the interests of farmers on the prairies, but he’s not undoing the tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Canola industry spokespeople do not sound impressed.
  
  
• The Take Back Alberta crowd continue to pursue their strategy of contesting municipal and school board elections to build power for the far-right in Alberta. Jeremy (on leave from the Report this month) has an article in the Tyee this week about their latest efforts.
  
  
• Defense lawyers in Edmonton are criticizing the Edmonton Police Service for wading into the politics around prosecutions, a move that Edmonton Journal court reporter Jonny Wakefield describes as unprecedented. The circumstances of the case, in which a woman has been charged with murdering a child, may leave the public sympathetic to a call for harsher prosecution, but the overstep by police into the territory of prosecutors threatens to “throw the administration of justice into disrepute,” one defense lawyer argued online Monday. Another described the EPS statement as the most extraordinary thing that the EPS has said during his fourteen-plus year legal career.

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