Rodney Neufeld is a public international lawyer with the Government of Canada, where he represents Canada in negotiations and litigation. He has worked primarily on international trade law, boundary disputes and Arctic sovereignty.
As counsel in the Trade Law Bureau of the Government of Canada, Rodney helps to defend Canada in trade and investment disputes and has represented Canada at the World Trade Organization and at various Free Trade Agreement tables, including in the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership.
With respect to litigation, he has represented Canada in disputes brought by and against Canada at the WTO as well as in third-party submissions. He has also helped defend Canada in numerous investor-state arbitrations brought under NAFTA Chapter 11, including UPS, Bilcon, Mesa, Windsteam I, Omnitrax, Resolute, Windstream II, and Ruby River, and he has represented Canada as a non-disputing party in other proceedings.
He has represented Canada in many trade and investment negotiations, including WTO Reform, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, CPTPP accession, CUSMA, Investor-State Dispute Settlement Reform in UNCITRAL, and several Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements. He also participated in the redrafting of Canada’s 2021 Model Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement. With respect to Arctic sovereignty and boundary disputes, Rodney has represented Canada at the Arctic counsel and meetings of the Five Arctic Ocean States in Oslo, Norway and Ilulissat, Greenland, and participated in bilateral negotiations with the United States and Denmark.
Prior to joining the Government of Canada, Rodney worked at the Secretariat of the WTO, and as an associate with Daniel Bethlehem on matters before the WTO, the European Court of Justice, and the International Court of Justice, including the defence of Belgium in the case of the Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of Congo v. Belgium).
At uOttawa, Rodney has taught Public International Law, International Trade Law and Law of the European Union in the Common Law faculty as well as Public International Law at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. At Carleton University, he taught the Law of International Organizations and Law of the European Union in the Law Program (Bachelor of Arts) as well as International Trade Law in the School of Public Policy & Administration. He was Co-Chair of the 2005 and 2006 Conferences of the Canadian Council on International Law and Co-editor with Isabelle Van Damme, Don McRae and Daniel Bethlehem of the Handbook on International Trade Law, published by Oxford University Press in 2010 and a second edition in 2022.