Ontario Teacher Strike Votes, November 2026: What a Vote Means for Your Child's School Year

Who is voting, and when

We found no public release of OECTA's vote dates on OECTA's own site, so its dates come from The Canadian Press and The Globe and Mail. ETFO runs two separate votes, one for teachers and occasional teachers and one for education workers. AEFO's membership figure includes professional and support staff, while its November vote is for regular and occasional teaching staff.

The CUPE-OSBCU vote closes at 6:00 p.m. on 18 November. ETFO says it will release results to members "soon after the results have been compiled." None of the five has said a strike date would follow.

What a strike vote is, and what a yes vote allows

A strike vote is a secret ballot. Under the Labour Relations Act, 1995, a strike needs a vote in which more than 50 per cent of those voting say yes. In school bargaining, the central and local tables each need their own vote.

A yes vote authorises job action. It does not start it. ETFO tells its members that a yes vote "gives ETFO the authority to take job action, if needed, ranging from work-to-rule to a possible full withdrawal of services," and that "Even if members vote in favour of strike action, that does not mean job action will happen immediately or at all." OSSTF puts it more bluntly: "A strike vote is not a strike, and it does not mean that job action is imminent or inevitable."

One legal detail matters for parents. In Ontario, work-to-rule by teachers is legally a strike. The School Boards Collective Bargaining Act, 2014 defines a teachers' strike to include "any withdrawal of services or work to rule by teachers acting in combination". So the legal steps that come before a walkout also come before teachers can stop writing report card comments.

ETFO also argues that "having a high strike vote early in the bargaining process actually decreases the chance of a strike". That is the union's claim, and we have no independent data to test it.

The legal steps before any strike, and what changes for your child at each one

The 16-day and 17-day figures you may see elsewhere describe the same day. The Labour Relations Act deems the no-board notice released on the day it is sent, and requires 16 days to elapse after that. Count the send date as day zero and the first legal strike day is day 17. ETFO and the Toronto District School Board both use the 17th-day wording. The Act requires the five days' notice before the strike begins, so a notice given during the wait does not move the earliest strike day past day 17.

As of 3 November 2026, the OLRB had not published its ruling, and none of the five unions had a no-board report or had given strike notice.

What job action changed for families in past rounds

Effects in past rounds were decided board by board, so what happened in one district did not happen everywhere.

Work-to-rule, 2019 to 2020

ETFO describes work-to-rule as "focusing on teaching and not attending staff meetings; not completing report card comments; not filing paperwork". Classes continued. ETFO's 2019 work-to-rule escalated to rotating strikes in the winter of 2020.

By January 2020, CBC reported that elementary teachers would no longer supervise extracurricular activities outside regular school hours, go on field trips or take part in assemblies, except to supervise students. Catholic teachers' campaign included not taking part in standardised testing and not preparing report card comments.

Rotating and province-wide strikes, 2020

High school teachers held a series of rotating strikes, one-day walkouts that moved between boards. On 21 February 2020, ETFO, OSSTF, OECTA and AEFO held a province-wide strike, and Global News reported that over two million Ontario students were out of class.

Exams and EQAO were handled locally. The minister said boards would decide whether to run the EQAO Grade 9 math assessment, and the Simcoe County District School Board postponed it. In the Ottawa area, CBC reported that exams at one board would "still start on Thursday as scheduled."

ETFO reached tentative central agreements on 20 March 2020, and its members ratified them on 28 April 2020.

The education worker strike, 2022

In November 2022 the province passed the Keeping Students in Class Act, 2022, which imposed a contract on CUPE education workers, banned them from striking and used the notwithstanding clause. About 55,000 education workers walked off the job for two days anyway, and many schools across the province closed. Schools reopened after the government promised to repeal the law. The repeal received Royal Assent on 14 November 2022 and deems the Act never to have been in force.

2023 to 2024: settled without a teacher strike

The last teacher round ended without a province-wide strike. OSSTF members voted for a process that could include binding interest arbitration, with no strikes or lock-outs in that round. ETFO reached a tentative agreement on 21 November 2023, ratified on 15 December 2023. OECTA reached a tentative deal in March 2024, after its members had voted 97 per cent in favour of a strike mandate. A high strike vote in that round was followed by a deal, not a walkout.

The school-year safeguard

Ontario keeps a body called the Education Relations Commission. It advises the province when a strike or lock-out would put students' completion of their courses at risk. In 2015 it did so for local high school strikes, and the province introduced legislation to protect the school year for 72,000 public secondary students in the Durham, Rainbow and Peel district school boards.

What support existed for parents in 2019-20

The province ran a Support for Parents program to give parents financial support during the education labour action of the 2019-20 school year. It paid parents for each day of school a child missed, or each day of child care that was not available, because of a strike. The rates were:

• $60 per day for children aged 0 to 6 not yet in school, whose school-based child care centre had to close
• $40 per day for students in Junior and Senior Kindergarten
• $25 per day for students in Grades 1 to 7
• $40 per day in total for students from JK to Grade 12 with special needs

It covered children up to age 12 (Grade 7), or up to age 21 for children and youth with special needs, in publicly funded schools.

That was the 2019-20 program. No 2026 equivalent had been announced in any source we read as of 3 November 2026.

Why bargaining is stuck in 2026

All five unions have been without a contract since the end of August. The old terms still apply for now. Under the Labour Relations Act, 1995, neither the employer nor the union may change wages or other terms of employment without the other's consent until a conciliation officer has been appointed and, where the Minister decides not to appoint a conciliation board, 14 days have passed after that no-board notice. After the freeze lifts, the School Boards Collective Bargaining Act, 2014 still requires at least five days' written notice to the union before the employer side alters a term. CUPE has told its members the expired agreement "still remains in place".

The holdup is a dispute over which issues are bargained centrally with the province and which are bargained locally with school boards. The Globe and Mail notes that salaries, class sizes and sick days are usually central issues. The unions' joint statement of 1 September 2026 says the government "has attempted to push long standing local bargaining items into central negotiations", naming staffing timelines and local professional development funding. The OLRB heard the cases over several dates in October, the last listed for CUPE-OSBCU on 28 October. CUPE-OSBCU and the Globe expected a ruling in early November. The Toronto Star reported on 2 November that it was expected mid-month.

The minister's office sees it differently. A spokesperson for Minister Paul Calandra said the OLRB process "has delayed the start of bargaining", that the province will be "ready and willing to negotiate whenever the unions are ready to begin," and that "Premature strike threats do not serve the interests of students and do nothing but create unnecessary panic for parents."

On the issues themselves, ETFO lists "lower class sizes, better supports for students with special needs, safer schools, manageable workloads, and fair compensation".

The employer side of the table also changed this year. Amendments to the School Boards Collective Bargaining Act in 2026 (S.O. 2026, c. 4) made CODE, the Council of Ontario Directors of Education, the employer bargaining agency for English-language public and Catholic boards and for boards set up under section 68 of the Education Act. French-language boards keep their own agencies, ACÉPO for public boards and AFOCSC for Catholic boards, and AEFO's teachers bargain with a council of the two. A notice of desire to bargain given to or by OPSBA or OCSTA, the earlier employer agencies, counts as given to or by CODE if that bargaining had not concluded on the Act's transition day. The amended Act also lets the Minister designate someone else by regulation if CODE is unable or unwilling to bargain. In August, OSSTF called for the 2014 Act itself to be repealed.

What happens next

The OLRB ruling is the practical first step. The law does not make the ruling a condition of a strike, but it bars a strike over the scope dispute and starts the central bargaining clock once scope is settled. CUPE-OSBCU says the parties can exchange proposals within 15 days of receiving the decision, and expects to be at the bargaining table again at about the time its vote results arrive.

The Toronto Star reported on 2 November that two teacher unions would start central talks in late November. The dates it published are for OSSTF:

• OSSTF education workers: 20 November, then 9 and 10 December
• OSSTF teachers and occasional teachers: 24 November, 2 December and 15 December

The other union's dates were not in the part of the article we could read, so we have not named it.

No result can come before a vote closes: OECTA closes on 13 November, OSSTF on 16 November, AEFO on 17 November, and ETFO and CUPE-OSBCU on 18 November. A yes result, on its own, does not start conciliation, a no-board notice or a strike notice.

For other changes that took effect in Ontario schools this year, see what changed in Ontario schools in September 2026. For how high school exams and attendance now count toward a final mark, see Ontario's new exam and attendance rules for 2026-27.

What to ask your child's school

No board has published a 2026 job-action plan in any source we read. These questions get at what a board would actually do:

• Does the board have a labour-update page, and where is it? The Toronto District School Board keeps one for each union.
• Has a no-board report been requested or issued for any union at your child's school? The 17-day clock cannot start without one.
• If work-to-rule starts, what is the plan for report cards, exams and EQAO? In 2020 those decisions were made board by board.
• Do before- and after-school programs run on a strike day?
• For a child with special education needs, what continues during job action, and who do you contact? If your child has an IEP, bring it to that conversation; our guide to the Ontario IEP explained covers what the plan says.

Work-to-rule in 2019-20 left teachers in the classroom while other duties stopped. In January 2020, OSSTF president Harvey Bischof told The Canadian Press that his members would still be talking to parents about student progress. That was one union's position in one round, so if written comments stop, ask your child's teacher how they will share progress instead. Our list of parent-teacher interview questions for Ontario can help with that conversation, and Ontario report card levels explained for parents covers what the marks mean.