A leadership candidate for the PC Party in Manitoba has raised concerns about content in school libraries, saying some books describe bestiality and incest.
Candidate Wally Daudrich brought up the issue during a recent leadership debate in Brandon, Manitoba.
During the Feb. 19 debate, Daudrich questioned other leadership candidate, and former minister of sport, culture and heritage, MLA Obby Khan, about the issue.
“In the last couple years, when you were a minister, you were approached by some of the mothers in Manitoba about pornography in the schools, pornography so egregious it actually describes to 13, 14, 15 year olds how to have sex with an animal and how to have sex with your parents,” Daudrich said to Khan. “You did nothing.”
Khan said the statement was “factually incorrect.” He also said the issue was not up to a minister to decide, but rather a decision for the municipalities and school boards.
“I did make the recommendation to move those age-appropriate books out into age-appropriate sections,” Khan said during the debate.
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The Epoch Times reached out Khan but did not hear back by publication time.
Daudrich told The Epoch Times in an interview that he had spoken to the mothers who raised questions about the material being inappropriate. He said the mothers were concerned that the material “is written in such a way not to educate, but to sexualize children.”
He said the book in question was “Identical” by Ellen Hopkins. The book is promoted as a story of twin sisters struggling with secrets in their “all-American family.”
Daudrich, who is in the tourism business, said should he be chosen as leader he would work to make sure schools are free of “indoctrination.”
“We want to bring schools back to what they were originally founded for—as an educator of children so that they’re fully ready for the world. Reading, writing, arithmetic, appropriate history—full history, the good and the bad—and that’s going back to what schools were and should be today.”
He said he had no intention of banning books.
“I just don’t want age-inappropriate and material inappropriate-books in front of children,” he said. “The parents of these children oftentimes are unaware of the books and what the content is.”
“I don’t even like to hear what’s there because much of the material is inappropriate for even adult ears, and it’s written as a way to sexualize our children,” he added.
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The question of age appropriate books in school libraries had been previously discussed by the public school board in Brandon in 2023.
At the time, the board voted against a motion that would have created a committee of trustees and parents to review books available in school libraries for age-appropriate material.
Content in school libraries has also been raised as an issue in other parts of Canada.
In 2022, a father from Abbotsford, B.C., raised questions about books available in the school district’s libraries. He was successful in getting the school board to remove three of the books he raised concerns about.
He told The Epoch Times the books described several sexual acts in detail.
RCMP in Chilliwack, B.C., investigated the content of some books after they received complaints in 2023. They concluded that the books did not meet the Criminal Code definition of child pornography.
RCMP said at the time that an investigator from the Chilliwack RCMP’s Serious Crime Section reviewed the publications with “the most concerning material.”
“The investigation has determined that this content does not meet the definition of child pornography under the Criminal Code of Canada,” an RCMP news release said.
“This is a serious allegation and one that caused many parents great concern in our community,” Sergeant Krista Vrolyk, spokesperson for the Chilliwack RCMP, said in the release.
Vrolyk said that while the material may be considered “inappropriate or concerning to some people” it did not violate the Criminal Code.
B.C. Conservative MLA Bruce Banman has also raised the issue in the B.C. legislature, asking the province’s education minister why a book that included sexually explicit material was available in public schools. It could be accessed by children as young as 11, he said.
He read a couple of explicit sentences from the book in question. Banman was then chastised by the Speaker for inappropriate language contained in the phrase. Banman asked how the content could be appropriate for a sixth grader if the words were considered unacceptable and disturbing to the House.
Lee Harding contributed to this report.
