Censorship focus: Canada

When Canadian non-binary and queer author Ronnie Riley discovered they’d been “shadow banned” last November they were horrified. But it was a matter of sooner rather than later.

“I felt absolutely horrible, but I knew it was a possibility,” said the Toronto-based writer, who spent several years trying to get their debut novel aimed at middle graders, Jude Saves the World, published. In the book, 12-year-old protagonist Jude Winters is non-binary and has ADHD. “I’ve experienced my share of transphobia and queerphobia, but this was particularly heartbreaking,” Riley told Index on Censorship. “Connecting with kids is one of the reasons most ‘kidlit’ authors write, and being denied those opportunities because of queerness is outrageous. It’s queerphobic. Homophobic. Transphobic.”

“Shadow banning” is a broad definition usually attributed to social media posts, describing the limiting of a particular user’s content without their knowledge. Riley’s discovery came via a leaked memo on Reddit that they then saw on social media. According to the circular, the Waterloo Catholic District School Board (WCDSB), about 95km outside Toronto, had decided to place books that were part of the Forest of Reading (FoR) programme but “don’t align with the Family Life curriculum” in the professional (Pro) section, where they are not immediately available to students.

The board added that “before JK [junior kindergarten] Grade 6 students may borrow these books from the library, a teacher must provide the Catholic context because students haven’t been instructed in the Family Life curriculum yet”. Jude Saves the World was one of four works targeted from the FoR programme.

When Index contacted WCDSB this January, the organisation’s senior manager of communications, Lema Salaymeh, told Index that all FoR titles have since been reclassified as fiction or picture books, adding: “This reclassification is part of our larger initiative to review the books catalogued in the Pro section. This effort will be conducted in tandem with our ongoing, scheduled review of our Library Collection Development Administrative Procedure, ensuring our collection remains dynamic and inclusive. By making these changes, we hope to create a more welcoming and diverse environment for all our students, including those who identify as 2SLGBTQIA+.”

This re-classification of books came after a co-ordinated pushback by the FoR, Scholastic Canada, The Writers’ Union of Canada and others. Unlike in the US, where book challenges are regular and well-documented, not as much data on book challenges and bans is available in the more liberal Canada. But as part of an “aggressive” response to censorship, a library challenges database is now in its early stages of creation, thanks to the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University, and so far it contains more than 600 entries, according to centre director James L Turk. The records start in 2010 and include books that have attracted complaints for perceived violence, illegal behaviour, sexism, racism against indigenous people, age inappropriateness and anti-Christian content. While most targeted items have stayed on the shelves, many have been relocated.

In Canada, the growing problem “should be seen as the canary in the mine metaphor – that book banning and book challenging is a starting place for worse things to come,” Jen Ferguson, a Michif/Métis and white author and activist warned an audience at Vancouver Writers Fest in October. “In the US, I have no rights over my reproductive system, which is fucking bananas,” said Ferguson, who now lives in Iowa. The challenges in the US are part of a “wave of fascism” involving fights that “mostly we’ve won” in Canada. But the writer added: “For the non-readers this is a sign of things to come. I think that’s why we need to care, all of us, and why we need to organise.”

Richard Beaudry, co-ordinator of the University of British Columbia’s Teacher-Librarianship programme, who has equipped librarians to deal with book challenges for the past two decades, said that there was no doubt that bannings had increased in Canada. In February 2023 in Calgary, Alberta, a preacher stormed a drag queen storytime event in a library, with bystanders saying he shouted “religious jargon” and transphobic slurs. He was arrested and charged with hate-motivated crimes. Three months later, in Manitoba, the Brandon School Division rejected a call to remove books on sexuality and gender identity, including titles such as It’s Perfectly Normal, an illustrated book by Robie H Harris for 10-year-olds and above which explores puberty and sex.

In September, some schools in Peel, Ontario, even removed all books published before 2008 – including the Harry Potter and Hunger Games series – as part of an “equity-based book weeding process” undertaken by the Peel District School Board, aimed at making sure library books were inclusive. It was immediately halted by Ontario education minister Stephen Lecce, who didn’t respond to Index’s requests for comment.

Peel District School Board told Index that it follows “library weeding guidelines set by the Canadian School Libraries Association” which direct it to keep books “relevant to the student population, inclusive, not harmful, and support the current curriculum from the Ministry of Education”. It said the guidelines also “[direct] teacher-librarians to consider weeding books that may be misleading, ‘ugly’ [in poor condition], superseded, trivial, irrelevant, and elsewhere easily available”.

With elections lined up in Canada for 2025, book bans are likely to increase

While most challenges are never successful, they still cause harm. “You’re killing a little piece of the literary ecosystem, doing it out of view,” said Brendan de Caires, executive director of PEN Canada. He highlighted that those demanding the bans were targeting relatively new authors such as Riley, who are “low-hanging fruit” in their eyes.

With elections lined up in Canada for 2025, book bans are likely to increase. After nearly a decade in power, Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau is tipped to lose to Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. The populist, who backed the 2020 Freedom Convoy protesting vaccine mandates, is favoured by groups behind the bans such as Liberty Coalition Canada, Save Canada and Parents for Parents’ Rights, according to Turk. None of these groups responded to requests for comment. “The threats to intellectual freedom are coming from all sides, and everyone bringing them is well intentioned in their own mind, even if their behaviour is reprehensible in the rest of our minds,” Turk said.

In Canada, most of these organisations instigating book challenges are relatively small and inspired by Judeo-Christian principles. Miramichi Freedom Warriors, which last year distributed thousands of photocopies of a library’s “requests for reconsideration” forms to fundamentalist Christian churches, created more challenges for the New Brunswick Public Library Service in four months than in the entire history of public libraries in the province, Turk said.

The largest and best-funded network behind the potential bans is Action4Canada, which has “taken the game plan of Moms for Liberty”, said Beaudry. Inspired by the sophisticated political operatives who receive huge sums of money from right-wing US foundations, the self-described “grassroots movement” was launched in British Columbia by Tanya Gaw and Valerie Price. They now claim to have nearly 100 chapters across the country.

Vehemently opposed to the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity programme (SOGI 123) introduced in British Columbia in 2016, Action4Canada’s tactics include a “notice of personal liability”, which they encourage individuals to send to their local libraries. It claims that books are violating the Canadian Criminal Code on child pornography, warning that people could be charged and jailed. The network’s “urgent actions” include petitions to ban SOGI 123 and a library appearance by drag queen Freida Whales in Kelowna, a city in the province. Action4Canada did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Queer Canadian author Robin Stevenson described them as “very much following that American playbook – ‘Let’s get Conservatives elected to school boards. Let’s challenge books. Here are the lists of books you should object to’”. One recent talk Stevenson scheduled was open to a whole Canadian school board but just one class attended. “The teacher told me her colleagues were too nervous about parents complaining so they didn’t include their classes,” she said, adding that there is a reluctance to put queer books on the shelves: “Librarians are telling me that they’re buying my book but they’ll keep it in the counsellor’s office.”

Stevenson added that there was also a “hesitancy to invite queer authors to schools in the first place”, as they wanted to avoid backlash. This ultimately costs LGBTQ+ authors, who make a large part of their living from these talks, Jen Ferguson told the VWF.

In the supposedly tolerant east side of Vancouver, librarians are today flipping through young adult novels to look for hateful and harmful comments, Jen Ferguson warned the audience at the VWF, recounting a conversation with a librarian. The Vancouver Public Library, however, said it had no evidence of this.

Perhaps one of the biggest prices will be the “unwritten books”, added de Caires. “You can’t even see consequences [of bans] until you have a decade of books not being written because the people who would have written them have been scared off.”

At the VWF, Ferguson stressed that “those of us who are furious about book banning and book challenging, we’re just slightly less organised” than those demanding the bans. For fellow panellist Winnipeg-born trans author Casey Plett, there’s a silver lining: “This is something that you can solve.”

For the CFE, it has meant arming people with information about each challenge – what’s being targeted, why and how – via its database, plus creating profiles of previously challenged books to be ready for “wild claims”. The CFE has been encouraging all libraries to add to the list. “[Librarians] have never historically treated a tweet or an email as a challenge,” said Turk, adding that getting them to understand this had been tricky. While he said public libraries in Canada had mostly been “the absolute strongest defenders of intellectual freedom”, the pressures in schools was different. Other than in British Columbia, most don’t have teacher-librarians, often leading to “terrible positions” adopted by school boards.

Turk added: “We have to do a lot of public education about this, talking about why [just] because you don’t like something or you find it offensive, that’s not grounds to say that nobody else can see it.”

But the resistance movement is gaining ground, with Beaudry saying that Canada is picking up the pace against censorship. He points to specialised work against book challenges from the intellectual freedom committee at the Canadian Federation of Library Associations, and said that in the last elections, almost everybody who ran as a trustee against the SOGI programme and LGBTQ+ books in schools was not elected. And of all the authors Index spoke to, every single one said they would remain defiant and refuse to be silenced.

This article will be published in the forthcoming issue of Index on Censorship. To read more about Index click here.