Students set to head back to school as new contract for Ontario teachers far off

TORONTO – Ontario students will soon return to school, but a new contract for their teachers and education workers may be far off as substantive bargaining has not even started.

Current education contracts are set to expire at the end of the month, but negotiations for a new deal have stalled before they even really started, with the parties not agreeing on which issues should be bargained centrally, and which should be local.

Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation president Martha Hradowy accused the government of trying to further centralize talks, moving issues such as transfer, layoff and recall language away from local tables.

“What we are seeing is this government take a position that they want to move almost all matters to the central table, therefore eliminating the ability for locals to deal with local issues with their local employer,” she said in an interview.

“It’s a pattern that we’ve seen with this government wanting to centralize control at Queen’s Park, and it’s highly problematic that local voice and local autonomy is being wanting to be stripped away by this government.”

The central-local split issue has been referred to the Ontario Labour Relations Board, effectively stalling bargaining.

Hradowy said talks should be continuing on the issues both sides agree are central, such as class sizes and workloads.

But Education Minister Paul Calandra said Thursday it is essential to have the certainty of what issues will be negotiated centrally before approaching bargaining as a whole.

“You wouldn’t put a puzzle together with half of the pieces in another box, right?” he said at a press conference in Bradford, Ont. 

“You can’t negotiate wages, you can’t negotiate classroom sizes, if you don’t know exactly what you’re negotiating centrally and what you’re negotiating locally.”

The major education unions asked the government to start this round of bargaining early, in March, but it declined so talks began in June.

The Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association is still at the table with the government, but it has found discussions around the central-local split difficult too, its president said.

“I’m a little disappointed that the government hasn’t turned their minds more seriously to this,” said René Jansen in de Wal. “It’s a bit of deja vu from the last round, where they just kind of dragged stuff out.”

David Mastin, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, said there won’t be any job action in the near future, as school returns.

“I would say parents don’t need to worry for back to school, but parents need to worry that the state of our public education is not healthy,” he said.

Unions have identified special education supports and class sizes as among their top priorities in this round of contract talks.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 20, 2026.