Debra Steger

Professor Steger joined the Faculty in 2004 after a 20 year career in the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Government of Canada and major Canadian law firms. At the Faculty of Law, she teaches and conducts research in the areas of international trade, investment, dispute settlement, international arbitration and the governance of international organizations. She is a Senior Fellow with the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). Her research is focused on global economic governance with an emphasis on improvement and reform of international economic organizations, international trade and investment agreements, and dispute settlement mechanisms, such as the WTO and investment arbitration. She led a major international and national research network as Scientific Director of the Emerging Dynamic Global Economies (EDGE) Network, a Network of Centres of Excellence (NCE) funded by the Government of Canada and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), devoted to responding to the challenges of the emerging economies in the changing global landscape. She was also co-leader of a major international collaborative initiative, funded by the European Commission to promote Canadian-European relations: the Canada-EU Trade Environment Technology Exchange (TETE), aimed at managing the interfaces among trade, environment and technology policies and encouraging regulatory cooperation in the context of the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) negotiations. She was the first Director of the Appellate Body Secretariat of the World Trade Organization from 1995-2001. During the Uruguay Round, she was the Senior Negotiator for Canada on Dispute Settlement and the Establishment of the World Trade Organization as well as the Principal Counsel to the Government of Canada for all of the Uruguay Round agreements. She also served as General Counsel of the Canadian International Trade Tribunal. From 1988-1994, she taught international trade law as an adjunct professor, and in 1995, held the Hyman Soloway Chair in Business and Trade Law at the University of Ottawa. She has also taught courses at The Hague Academy of International Law, Columbia University, Washington College of Law American University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Victoria. Professor Steger is a member of the editorial advisory board of the Journal for International Economic Law, Oxford University Press. She serves on the program advisory committee of the Canadian Ditchley Foundation, and as a member of the International Scientific Review Committee, National Centre of Competence in Research Trade Regulation, Swiss National Science Foundation. She also serves on the board of advisers to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) project on Building Capacity through Training in Dispute Settlement in International Trade, Investment and Intellectual Property, and is a member of the Trade Committee of the International Law Association. She has chaired a WTO dispute settlement panel, acted as counsel to governments in several WTO disputes, and has provided technical assistance and training to developing country Members of the WTO. A frequent writer and commentator, she is the author of Peace Through Trade: Building the WTO, and is currently writing a book on the WTO Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Agreement for Oxford University Press. She is the editor of Redesigning the World Trade Organization for the Twenty-first Century, published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, CIGI and International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in English in 2010 and in Chinese in 2011. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.