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.”

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

Allison Jones, The Canadian Press