The Alberta government has introduced legislation to ensure children and young teens won’t be able to access sexually graphic images in books at public libraries.

Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams, at a news conference, stressed they will not ban books. He held up a sexually explicit example of the graphic images they seek to restrict.

“We will require that they are put behind a counter in a place that children cannot find them,” Williams said Thursday after tabling the bill in the house.

“When a family walks into a public library, they should feel confident that appropriate safeguards are in place, that their children will feel comfortable there,” he added.

“It’s a reasonable expectation to balance the needs of the family along with the ability for libraries to continue offering services.”

The bill looks at steps to make sure children ages 15 and under can’t access visual depictions of sex. Options include having such material controlled by library staff or put in separate areas.

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Premier Danielle Smith’s government previously made rule changes to ban graphic sexual material in school libraries, resulting in some books being pulled from shelves.

Opposition NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi mocked Williams’ bill.

“This government with its $9.4-billion deficit, its inability to spend any money correctly, is now building a team of library inspectors,” Nenshi told reporters at the legislature.

“Can you imagine? What do they wear? What are their uniforms? Do they read every book? Are they librarians?

“This is insanity, and it’s taking away the ability of people to make their own decisions.

“This government doesn’t believe in human rights,” he added. “It believes in dictating what people read, what people see, what people think.”

In Calgary, Mayor Jeromy Farkas told reporters, “We’re still reviewing the exact legislation and what the impacts would be.

He added, “My understanding is the intent, at least from the various conversations I’ve had with ministers as well as public statements, was this was not intended to capture standalone libraries and that municipal autonomy would be respected.”

The library changes are one part of the bill. It also proposes changes to create a provincewide councillor accountability framework the includes enforceable standards of conduct and third-party investigations for serious misconduct.

It will also require municipalities to publicly disclose salaries above a specified threshold.

Farkas said he is happy to give the bill his “endorsement” especially on accountability measures and code of conduct.

&copy 2026 The Canadian Press

On an ordinary April day in 1999 in a small agricultural community in the heart of Alberta’s southern Bible Belt, a gunman entered W.R. Myers High School in Taber — killing one student before a gym teacher managed to tackle him down.

The student who lost his life was Jason Lang. His friend Shane Christmas, also 17, was blasted in the stomach but survived.

It was the first fatal school shooting in Canada in a quarter of a century — and came eight days after the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., where 12 students and one teacher were killed.

Now, 27 years later, Dale Lang, Jason’s father, is speaking out after another tragic school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C. has shaken Canada.

“This is something that you can’t fix. It’s a very helpless feeling, a very empty feeling.”

He says the shooting that took his son’s life will never fade from his memory.

“Even though I would say that God has healed us over the time, we still think about it sometimes and we still live in a place where you know you’ve lost somebody and you can’t get them back.”

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Jason’s legacy has continued in several ways, including a scholarship in his name, which has helped countless students.

“We have had, over the years, a number of students who have contacted us to say thank you, to say they remember Jason, they know what happened. So, there’s kind of a legacy going on and hopefully it’s a positive thing that helps people remember things can go wrong and we have to watch out for each other.”

After the shooting in 1999, when classes at W.R. Myers resumed, Lang returned to the school in an effort to heal as a community.

“A lot of the kids were very frightened about the idea of going back into the school where somebody had been killed. For us to be able to (greet them), that was a healing thing for us, but also a healing thing for the kids.”

Lang, an Anglican minister at the time, became a tireless crusader for nearly a decade against the sort of bullying and school violence that led to the shooting. He then walked away from organized religion.

He says the message he shared following Jason’s death unfortunately still rings true today.

“We’re living in a world that’s pretty broken and damaged and people are getting damaged. It was my hope that those kinds of things would begin to change a little but in the 27 years since, we still see a lot of terrible things happening to people, needless things happening.”

Now, for the families of Tumbler Ridge, like Lang’s family, things cannot be the same.

“For the families that lost people, it’s a new normal and it’s not a very nice normal,” said Lang.

As a former pastor, Lang says faith, forgiveness and acceptance was crucial for his personal journey of healing.

“We need some place that we can go to (a church), where we are stimulated to honour and respect other people and treasure other people — support people wherever and whenever we can. There’s lots of good people out there doing nice things and good things,” Lang said.

“But there’s still a lot of broken people and hurting situations and difficult family circumstances and all of those things. So, I’ll just keep praying and we’ll see what happens.”

While hesitant to give advice on healing to other people, Lang does believe there is a way to continue your life even after dealing with such a horrible tragedy.

“These things are painful and when you think about them even 20 years later, you still have a sense of the pain, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be healed and move on with your life.”

With files from Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press

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