TORONTO – Teachers in Ontario’s French system are holding a strike today, as public elementary and high school teachers walk out at select boards.
The strikes come one day after all four of Ontario’s major teachers’ unions – including the one representing English Catholic teachers – announced a joint one-day strike for next Friday, Feb. 21.
It’s a bid to ramp up pressure on the government as months of contract talks are at a standstill.
Today’s one-day strike by 12,000 French teachers is the first such job action since the inception of French-language school boards in 1997.
Elementary teachers have been holding rotating strikes as well as weekly provincewide strikes. Today they are targeting the Bluewater, Grand Erie, Hamilton-Wentworth, Keewatin-Patricia, Lakehead, Ontario North East, Ottawa-Carleton, Peel, Penetanguishene, Protestant Separate, Simcoe County, Superior-Greenstone, Trillium Lakelands and York Region school boards, as well as the Ottawa Children’s Treatment Centre.
High school teachers are striking at the Algoma, Superior-Greenstone, Greater Essex, Avon Maitland, Niagara, Limestone, and Renfrew school boards.