Ontario’s main teachers’ unions say they expect thousands of their members to gather at the legislature today during a provincewide strike.
The labour groups say today marks the first time since 1997 that teachers and education workers from all the major unions will walk out on the same day.
Teachers will be picketing at schools across the province, but in Toronto, members are being directed to the legislature, which they plan to surround.
Legislative security is bracing for a large crowd and has said the road around the building will be closed.
Harvey Bischof, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, says he hopes it sends a message to the government.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce says the two million students who will be out of class today should be in school instead.

A group of hereditary leaders from the Wet’suwet’en Nation in British Columbia is to spend the day with Mohawk supporters in Ontario.
The B.C. hereditary chiefs are thanking the Mohawks for supporting them in opposition to a pipeline project on their traditional territory by blocking a critical rail line between Toronto and Montreal.
A notice telling police and reporters to stay away says the gathering is to celebrate friendship, healing, peace and optimism, and to talk politics.
The rail blockade, and others like it across the country, went up after the RCMP enforced a court injunction against the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and supporters, forcing them off an access road to a worksite for the Coastal GasLink pipeline.
It’s part of a multibillion-dollar project to send natural gas to a terminal on the B.C. coast for export, which has broad support from elected band councils along the route.
The hereditary Wet’suwet’en leaders say they’re willing to talk with representatives of the Crown, but only after the RCMP and Coastal GasLink workers have left their traditional lands.

Hundreds of Canadians and their family members are to be released from quarantine today after two weeks in isolation at an Ontario Canadian Forces base.
They’ll get to leave their quarters at CFB Trenton just hours after a new planeload of people potentially exposed to the novel coronavirus called COVID-19 arrived from Japan overnight.
The evacuees leaving quarantine were the first to arrive from the centre of the novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, on Feb. 7.
The 213 Canadians and accompanying family members were flown from the quarantined city aboard flights chartered by the Canadian and American governments and taken to the base for isolation and observation.
Government officials say none of the evacuees has shown any symptoms of the virus during their stay at the base.
Health Minister Patty Hajdu says the government is helping all the evacuees with their travel plans, but all will be expected to make their own ways home from Ontario.

The Manitoba government plans to transfer ownership of northern airports and ferries to First Nations communities.
The province has signed a preliminary deal with the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs that the two sides are hoping will lead to some assets being transferred as early as this summer.
Details of the deal are still to be worked out, however, and the assembly’s grand chief, Arlen Dumas, says the federal government will have to provide some type of resources as well.
Premier Brian Pallister says the deal is an example of reconciliation, because it provides First Nations with economic opportunities and ownership of the transportation system used to supply food, medication and other goods.
Dumas says Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative government has been open to looking at innovative ways to improve opportunities in areas such as forestry and treaty land entitlements.
Dumas says there is trust between the assembly and the Tory government.