Emily Home
Lawyer, she/her/hers
Emily Home is an adept litigator with proven skills helping labour-side clients resolve complex disputes.
Emily represents unions, associations and their members in all matters related to labour law, human rights and civil litigation, including constitutional litigation. As a litigator, she represents clients in the Superior Court, Divisional Court and Court of Appeal. She also appears frequently in private labour arbitrations and before a range of tribunals and boards including the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, Ontario Labour Relations Board, Grievance Settlement Board and Landlord and Tenant Board. Her strengths come to the fore particularly in cases requiring the untangling of complicated factual issues.
Since joining the firm in 2020, Emily has helped represent transit unions, education unions, police associations and skilled trades, often in cases of significance not only to clients themselves but to the labour movement and the public more generally. Her record includes helping defend the access of her association client and the wider public to the human rights tribunal system, the right of unions to lobby governments on behalf of their members and the Charter rights of over 750,000 Ontario education workers subjected to unfair wage restraint legislation.
Emily is a member the Advocates Society and a past Member-at-Large of the society’s Labour & Employment Practice Group. She is also a member of the Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers and the Law Union of Ontario. She has spoken at the Police Association of Ontario annual employment law conference.
Emily studied law at Osgoode Hall Law School, graduating in the top 10% of her class and having been awarded several prizes for top marks, including in civil procedure. While at Osgoode, she served as an associate editor of the Osgoode Hall Law Journal and worked at Parkdale Community Legal Services in the Housing Rights division.
She holds an MA in Canadian Politics from Queen’s University and a BA in Canadian Studies from Trent University.
Decisions of Interest
Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 113 v. Ontario, 2024 ONCA 407 (CanLII)
- In this landmark case, the Ontario Court of Appeal found that Ontario violated the Charter by removing the right to strike of TTC workers. The UPFH team was led by Ian Fellows and, in addition to Emily, included Kristen Allen, Joanna Birenbaum, and Adriana Zichy.
Weilgosh v. London District Catholic School Board, 2022 HRTO 1194
- A case before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) in which the tribunal determined that it has concurrent jurisdiction over human rights matters related to collective agreements and that unionized employees should therefore have direct access to the tribunal.
Ontario English Catholic Teachers Assoc. v. His Majesty, 2022 ONSC 6658
- A Charter challenge successfully overturning provincial wage restraint legislation infringing on the rights of public sector unions to meaningful collective bargaining.
Working Families Ontario v. Ontario, 2021 ONSC 4076 and Working Families Coalition (Canada) Inc. v. Ontario, 2021 ONSC 7697 and Working Families Coalition (Canada) Inc. v. Ontario (Attorney General), 2023 ONCA 339
- A Charter challenge, advanced by a coalition of education sector unions, that successfully overturned legislated restrictions on third-party political advertising but that the Government of Ontario then overrode – notoriously invoking the notwithstanding clause of the Charter for the first time. The unions were then successful at the Ontario Court of Appeal, where a 2-1 majority held that the legislation unjustifiably violated section 3 of the Charter.
- A termination case resulting in the reinstatement of five grievors who were terminated without just cause, resulting in findings that the employer fell short of the standard of reasonable care in investigating the allegations against them.
ATU Local 113 v HMQRO, 2023 ONSC 3618
- A successful Charter challenge to legislation stripping all TTC employees of the right to strike. The court found that the TTC is not an essential service, and the breach of section 2(d) could not be justified under section 1.