In July, Alberta’s (Canada) Education Minister, Demetrios Nicolaides, issued Ministerial Order (#030/2025), requiring school authorities to remove student access to books containing explicit written and visual depictions of sexual acts, and to establish a process of regularly reviewing materials to ensure they don’t violate these standards. The rules apply to students in Kindergarten to Grade 12 and cover books stocked in libraries and classrooms.
The latest update came with Ministerial Order (#034/2025), which was issued this week on September 8, 2025, following concerns about bans of notable novels like The Handmaid’s Tale. The order has since been updated to allow written depictions, but maintains the ban on visual depictions. In response to the July order, the Edmonton Public Schools Board (in Edmonton, Alberta) had compiled a list of 226 books to be removed from libraries and classrooms, which gives some indication of what works may be affected when the Order goes into effect across Alberta on January 6, 2026. The list included the following manga (via CTV News):
- Berserk by Kentaro Miura, Volume 3
- Black Bird by Kanoko Sakurakoji, Volumes 1-11, 13-14, 18
- Trigun Maximum by Yasuhiro Nightow, Volume 12
The Edmonton Public Schools Board oversees 120,000 students. If the list (and the Ministerial Order) is anything to go by, it may require the banning of these same manga and others by every “Alberta public or separate school board, francophone regional authority, operator of a charter school, person responsible for the operation of an independent school, or independent ECS operator,” as stipulated by the order, which would cover over 800k students (Alberta student population statistics).
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Source: CTV News, CBC
©Kentaro Miura (Studio Gaga)/Hakusensha ©Kanoko Sakurakoji/Shogakukan © Yasuhiro Nightow/Shonen Gahosha
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