Bill 123: Fighting Extreme Heat in Schools Act, 2026

This bill primarily affects Ontario public and Catholic school boards — essentially large public-sector employers managing hundreds of buildings, fleets of buses, and thousands of staff across the province. Day-to-day operations touched include facility management (retrofitting or installing cooling systems), transportation operations (ensuring buses meet temperature standards), and HR and health and safety administration (updating protocols, training staff, consulting Joint Health and Safety Committees). While individual school boards vary in size, all of them — from large urban boards like Toronto DSB to smaller rural or Indigenous-community boards — must comply, and smaller or older boards with less capital capacity may face disproportionate resource challenges meeting the 26°C threshold. Private schools and childcare settings are not directly covered by this bill.