Taxpayer-Funded Attack Ads Targeting Teacher Unions

The draft script obtained by The Trillium is a government document — labelled "Ministry of Education: Student Achievement First" and dated July 10, 2026 — that scripts actors playing parents to criticize the unions the government is currently bargaining against. Scripted lines include "I read that Ontario teachers are already the highest paid in Canada" and "And they take an average of 14 sick days. No note needed," with alternate takes on sick notes and caps. The ad then pivots to the government's "going back to basics" education priorities.

The timing is the issue. The script surfaced while the stalled bargaining has gone nowhere: ETFO, OSSTF, OSBCU, OPSEU and AEFO have all suspended talks and referred scope-of-bargaining disputes — over which issues are negotiated centrally versus locally — to the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Those decisions could take months, while collective agreements expire at the end of August 2026. OECTA is the only major education union with sessions still scheduled.

Public money spent on messaging that shapes a live labour dispute is a different thing from public money spent on public information, and it compounds the government's advertising spending record. OSSTF President Martha Hradowy said it is "not unlike this government to spend public money on ads to try and shape a narrative." ETFO president David Mastin said the government is "spending public dollars working with a public relations firm to shamefully produce attack ads." The firm was not named.

Education Minister Paul Calandra defended the campaign, citing a responsibility to address "inconsistent attendance" and saying the government "will not shy away from communicating directly with parents." The government also points to union advertising campaigns of its own — OSSTF's "Ford High," ETFO's "Smaller Classes, BIG DIFFERENCE," OSSTF's "Underfunded & Over It," and CUPE-OSBCU door-knocking in government caucus ridings — the last of which it calls a "coordinated, highly political campaign." The difference the unions raise is whose money pays for it.

At ETFO's annual meeting in Toronto the same day, Monday Aug. 17, 2026, the union turned on exactly the issue the ad targets. President David Mastin told hundreds of educators they were heading into the school year without a new collective agreement and that "the government is coming after our sick leave. Trying to prevent people from using sick days has no positive benefit for our schools." The Trillium, Aug. 18, 2026.

Mastin said restricting sick leave does nothing about workload, burnout, violence in schools or the shortage of student supports, and criticized the government for purchasing "media time criticizing sick leave" while leaving out that some members have no access to it and omitting occasional teachers, DECEs and education worker salaries. The union is preparing for what it describes as a strong strike mandate, with an online strike vote planned for this fall.

ETFO is already advertising online, on billboards, on transit, and on TV and radio, and has mailed millions of postcards to households. Mastin's framing was that the union cannot match the government's advertising power: "As much as this government may have advertising power, and we can't match them on that, they cannot match our 84,000 members."

NDP education critic Chandra Pasma called the ads "ludicrous" and said "teachers and education workers haven't been using our taxpayer dollars to do it," accusing Calandra of "ragging the puck in bargaining." Peel Region trustee Jill Promoli, whose two-year-old son Jude died of influenza B in 2016 after it swept through his sister's kindergarten class, said greater barriers to staying home sick would mean "more people getting sick" and would increase "the burden that we place on our hospitals."

Meanwhile the procedural fight at the OLRB has blocked substantive talks on sick leave, wages and class sizes entirely — the ads are running into a dispute where the parties have not yet reached the subjects the ads are about.