James G. Knight

About James G. Knight

James G. Knight, known to clients as Jamie, is a senior partner at Filion Wakely Thorup Angeletti and has spent over four decades acting for management on labour and employment matters. The employers Jamie advises come from manufacturing, health care, entertainment, municipal government, finance and other service businesses. Two parts of the work stand out: collective bargaining, where Jamie's experience runs deep, and helping an employer decide how to answer a union's organizing drive. Jamie works out of the firm's Toronto and Hamilton offices.

Jamie earned an LL.B. at the University of Toronto, also studied at Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean, and was called to the Ontario bar in 1985. By 2005 Jamie was already a partner at Filion, and from 2021 to 2024 served as the firm's managing partner. The Best Lawyers in Canada has recognized Jamie since 2006, and Jamie is a Fellow of the American College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.

Writing and teaching have long run alongside the casework. Jamie has written or co-written about 20 books and guides for lawyers and HR staff, many reissued in several editions, among them the third edition of Canadian Collective Bargaining Law: Principles and Practice. For two decades Jamie taught employment law to managers and HR professionals at the University of Guelph, with a focus on workplace safety and what legislation requires of employers. Jamie also sat on the board of the Canadian Association of Counsel to Employers from 2008 to 2019, serving as its president for 2016-17, and co-chaired the Law Society of Ontario's yearly 6-Minute Labour Lawyer program from 2008 to 2014. Jamie speaks often and comments in the media on issues such as violence at work, keeping a workplace respectful and managing employee attendance. Back in 2005, Canadian HR Reporter turned to Jamie on the year's bargaining outlook, and Jamie pointed to pensions as an issue looming large for employers.

Away from work, a lot of Jamie's community life is in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Jamie sits on the board of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Museum and served as president of the town's Rotary Club for 2024-25. Jamie has travelled widely, too, including to sub-Saharan Africa, and has been involved with Canadian charities there that work with local partners on schooling, child care and micro-finance for women and people with disabilities.