ABOUTTrue last year Prime Minister Danielle Smith's government has decided to introduce restrictions on… what names and pronouns Alberta students can use at school, what do they learn in sexuality education courses?, what sports teams do they play on?And what books can they read. But the individuals and groups claiming victory for these policies and working to influence the upcoming provincial school board elections are not mostly parents concerned about their school-age children—they are mostly conservative activists with no direct ties to the school system.
A new report from the Parkland Institute, a non-partisan research organization based at the University of Alberta, shows how the province's education system is at the center of a growing political and ideological fight over what children are exposed to in schools – a fight driven by groups such as the Christian nationalist-affiliated Action4Canada and the far-right group Take Back Alberta. This is a continuation of a similar movement in the United States, where numerous laws have been passed, also targeting children's books and sports teams, as well as what bathrooms they can use. The movement embodied in the Project 2025 leadership is influencing US President Donald Trump and his allies at the state level.
And while much attention has been paid to the direct negative impact of these policies on LGBTQ2S+ youth in Alberta, experts warn that these groups ultimately seek to impact other aspects of education. This includes not only a wave of anti-transgender laws, but also a push for social conservatism and school privatization throughout the education system.
“This isn't just about transgender people,” says Heather Gunshorn, the report's author. “They want to take over politics. They want to take over education. They want to take back the family – that's white Christian patriarchal supremacy. So it's bad for everyone except the few alpha males who end up on top.”
Ganshorn is a librarian and the parent of two Alberta public school students. She is also the Director of Research at Support Our Students Alberta, a community organization that advocates for inclusive and equitable public education. In the Parkland report, she profiles key actors, including Action4Canada and Taking Back Alberta, who played a role in pushing for so-called “parental rights” legislation in the province.
Most recently, this was reflected in the requirements for school libraries proposed in May. The province has said it plans to ban books it deems inappropriate due to what it considers sexually explicit content. At the time, Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said the changes were the result of conversations with concerned parents.
However, the Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF) reported that the list of proposed books to be banned, including four graphic novels publicly mentioned by Alberta officials, was provided to government officials by at least two socially conservative activist groups: Parents for Choice in Education (PCE) and Action4Canada. Of the four books flagged by government officials, three were LGBTQ2S+ graphic novels aimed at youth. (After this policy was criticized by the public, it was recently modified ban only “explicit visual depictions of sexual acts” from school library shelves. This means Margaret Atwood and Maya Angelou titles will be safe, but graphic novel memoirs like Maya Kobabe will be safe. Paul Queer and Alison Bechdel Fun Home it will be deleted anyway.)
Ganshorn says parents, educators and Alberta as a whole should be concerned about the active involvement of these advocacy groups, which have nothing to do with schools or children, in Alberta's education policy. She points to the “parental rights”-oriented organization PCE, whose chief executive John Hilton-O'Brien does not have children himself.
“Why do they care so much about education?” – asks Ganshorn. According to her, this is not due to personal experience; this is because education is a tool of socialization.
Right-wing politicians said the same thing: in a 2016 interview. Rebel NewsEzra Levant, then-MP – and future Alberta United Conservative Party premier – Jason Kenney said the school system has “built-in… identity politics” in the minds of young Albertans, and it's up to Conservative politicians to “crack that nut.”
In recent years, conservative groups have decided that instead of complaining about what children are learning in school, they will go straight to the source. Hilton-O'Brien was a founding member and former president of the Wildrose Party of Alberta, which Smith led until 2014, when she and eight other legislators crossed the line to join the then Progressive Conservative Party.
In a newsletter to supporters following the initial announcement of the book ban, PCE took credit for introducing the policy. In messages to supporters, Action4Canada thanked Nicolaides for meeting with their representatives last fall, which began the process of introducing a book ban in Alberta.
Freedom of information requests filed by IJF revealed that Alberta officials also used a book list for targeting purposes that was obtained from a website associated with the U.S.-based group Moms for Liberty, which has been designated an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization. Moms for Freedom is known to provide government officials with model laws and lists of books and media that can be used in the United States.
Tthis is not the first time Western Canada's prime minister tried to attribute anti-LGBTQ2S+ policies to an influx of “concerned parents” when in fact it was the work of an advocacy group. A similar situation unfolded in Saskatchewan in 2023 around a school pronoun policy that requires parents to be informed if a young person wants to change the name or pronouns they use at school, and also limits sex education resources.
Premier Scott Moe said the policy was adopted after consultation with “concerned parents” in the province. But when the media asked how many parents told him they were surprised to learn their child had changed his name and pronouns at school, Moe said he didn't have an answer. He also admitted that he had not heard such concerns from anyone in his district.
Action4Canada also won to adopt Saskatchewan policy. The group's founder, Tanya Gow of British Columbia, said Action4Canada sent more than 10,000 emails to Moe and then Education Minister Dustin Duncan through an online petition, and said a member of the group met with Duncan's staffer to serve a “responsibility notice.” The non-legally binding document, a tactic often used by groups to threaten or intimidate, argues that the government is responsible for harming children by exposing them to “sexually explicit” material.
In a video about Saskatchewan politics, Guo said: “There is no such thing as a trans child. I will keep saying it and saying it: there is no such thing as a trans child.”
Hazel Woodrow, education program manager for the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, says Action4Canada has deep ties to many movements associated with hate groups, including Freedom Convoy, anti-vaccination campaigns and anti-LGBTQ2S+ propaganda. The group has sued the provincial government over vaccine requirements, protested drag queen story hours and equated sex education resources, including those related to consent, with child sex trafficking. Guo also said she believes we are engaged in what she calls a spiritual battle of good and evil when it comes to sexual orientation and gender diversity guidelines in schools.
But for many lower-level members, their involvement with Action4Canada amounts to simply messaging on social media or sending formal letters to politicians. Woodrow likened groups like Action4Canada to a multi-level marketing scheme, but instead of selling discount knives or sketchy smoothies, it's misinformation and fear-mongering against children.
Woodrow also compared Action4Canada's anti-LGBTQ2S+ advocacy to the anti-abortion work done by groups like the Ontario Pro-Life Campaign Coalition in the 2010s, particularly how those movements spread through misinformation on social media and fueled moral panics around issues like abortion or transgender rights.
“You follow Action4Canada on Facebook, and then you see what they're posting about, and then you share it on your Facebook wall, and then your friends share it. And suddenly there's thirty people in your town who are all up in arms about it,” she says. “So Action4Canada can create calls to action and, to some extent, encourage people to do things. But it's also hard to measure the impact of how those ideas are picked up when they hit social media, and it's out of the control of A4C or CLC.”
Woodrow says these groups give people the opportunity to express concerns to government officials in order to get specific legislation or policies passed through form-filled letters and legal threats.
“They will prepare letter forms that you can sign and send, as well as [take] approach of sending out these liability notices that aren't real, but are intimidating and basically say something like, 'If you force or expose my child to X, Y, and Z in the classroom, then you are responsible for X, Y, and Z,' and it's essentially using legal language to intimidate people,” Woodrow says.
Gunshorn says the next steps for many of these groups in Alberta will come after the upcoming school board elections on Oct. 20. The UCP-affiliated group Take Back Alberta has already said it is providing training to potential candidates for local school boards on anti-LGBTQ2S+, anti-sexual orientation and gender identity issues.
And while the talking points of the Take Back Alberta movement and its leader David Parker may seem far-fetched, Gunshorn warns that their impact is already being felt in Alberta.
“People say, 'Well, he's on edge,'” she says. “But he took over the UCP. After we saw what MAGA did and what they were able to do, we're still here in Canada saying, 'Well, these people are just crazy.' That really worries me because they are a serious threat.”
This story was created in collaboration with Magazine Extra.
