Jackie Esmonde

About Jackie

Jackie Esmonde is a partner whose practice covers labour, constitutional, and public law along with Indigenous rights. She has litigated in every level of court in Ontario, in the Federal Courts, and before the Supreme Court of Canada, and regularly appears before administrative tribunals. Her public interest work includes test cases challenging systemic discrimination in government benefits, police misconduct, and the legacy of colonialism, and she has represented Indigenous families and nations at inquests including the Ipperwash Inquiry. She served as a researcher and writer on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final report, and one of her academic articles was later cited by the Supreme Court. More recently she was lead counsel for CUPE's school board sector in Ontario, handling arbitrations and advising on labour issues connected to the pandemic. She taught constitutional law in Osgoode Hall's LLM program for five years and graduated from Osgoode in the top one percent of her class. She was called to the Ontario bar in 2003.