McGuinty Thanks Teachers for Giving Up One-Day Strike

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty, declared on Friday that he is indeed happy that teachers have given up their planned protest, which would have resulted in closing all elementary schools across the province. He also pleading elementary teachers’ to kindly resume extracurricular activities, alleging that “students need you.”

The decision of cancelling the strike was reached after The Ontario Labour Relations Board declared late night, around 4 a.m., that any protest strike during routine school hours on Friday will be deemed as “unlawful strike.” Soon after the declaration was made, the President of Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, Sam Hammond, reluctantly urged all teachers to report for duty at work. Consequently, McGuinty later thanked all teachers for obeying the ruling, while requesting them to await for the issue to be resolved in courts, that has to rule on whether the province was within its rights to forcefully impose new contract on the teachers through special legislation. McGuinty mentioned that “there is the outstanding matter of extracurriculars and I would ask the federation to allow teachers to do what they most naturally want to do, which is to devote themselves to their students and that means doing more than showing up for school hours. It means providing enriched opportunities before school and after school.”

Furthermore, McGuinty also thanked parents for their patience, saying that “I’m pleased we got the ruling we were seeking, I’m disappointed yet again parents had to be put through this roller coaster.”