MP Calls on Canadian Heritage Committee to Denounce Peel School Board Book Purge

Conservative MP Rachael Thomas stands during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Dec. 2, 2022. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

Conservative MP Rachael Thomas says she will be tabling a motion to denounce the decision by an Ontario school board to remove books through a process called “weeding.” 

The MP for Lethbridge, Alberta, made the remarks during a Sept. 28 meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, of which she is a member. She called on the committee to affirm its commitment to freedom of speech.

“The reason I am tabling this motion is because there have been many students, many parents, and many community members as well as teachers who have spoken out with great concern regarding this,” she said during the meeting.

“The thing that is of concern is not that books are being taken off the shelf and that there’s this replenishment process. That is normal. In this case, though, what the school board has described as its criteria is of great concern.”

Ms. Thomas said one of the criteria for removing books is whether or not the literature is “culturally relevant.”

“So it poses great questions with regards to freedom of speech, freedom of expression. Who gets to be the czar of truth, who gets to determine what is culturally relevant?” she said.

School Library Weeding

Ms. Thomas’s comments refer to the Peel District School Board (PDSB), which was criticized by the education minister after reports were made that it had directed librarians to remove books published before 2008. The board’s education director previously told The Epoch Times the directive was not issued.

“Regardless of publication date, older or damaged books that are accurate, relevant to the student population, inclusive, not harmful, and support the current curriculum, may stay,” Director Rashmi Swarup said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.

A PDSB manual for librarians indicates a 15-year “weeding date.” A spokesperson for the board did not clarify the term. In a statement, the spokesperson said the board was “currently reviewing our training resources and processes,” and that weeding guidelines consider “many factors, including the circulation data.”

Ms. Thomas said she will be asking that the committee “denounce the decision by the Peel Region school board libraries to remove thousands of books published before the year 2008 and deemed by the school board to be culturally irrelevant, and call for all removed books to be immediately returned to school libraries.”

Determining Cultural Relevance

She said determining cultural relevance is not a simple issue.

“There was actually a Japanese student who was willing to be interviewed by the media concerning this, and she raised some really good concerns. As a Japanese student, she was curious as to whether or not books having to do with internment camps of the Japanese would still be preserved, or if those would be removed from the shelf,” Ms. Thomas said during the committee meeting.

“For her, that’s culturally relevant, but maybe to the Caucasian man who decided to take those books off the shelf, maybe it wasn’t relevant. So who gets to be the czar of what’s relevant and what’s not? Who gets to determine what is true and what is not?”

Ms. Thomas said there was a purpose in letting divergent viewpoints be expressed. “The way we do that is by allowing a multitude of books to remain on the shelf and allow robust debate.” She said that was the source of progression for society.

“That’s what allows for one idea to rise against another and for new innovation to transpire.”

Ms. Thomas also posted a clip of her speech at the committee to X (formerly Twitter). “Canadians are done with woke censorship,” she wrote.

“The Peel School region removed thousands of books because they weren’t ‘culturally relevant.’ Will the Liberal-NDP government stand up for free speech, or stand by their censorship policies,” she said.