Gilles Paquet was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, at the 2:00 p.m. ceremony on Friday, June 12, “in recognition of his extraordinary career as a social scientist, his pioneering commitment to advancing the engagement of scholarship within public dialogue, and his dedication both as a professor and a leader of academics in national organizations.”
Gilles Paquet is a well-known Canadian specialist on governance, an economic historian who has made significant revisionist contributions to Canada’s history and a critical journalist in the electronic and print media in French and English on public policy. For 18 years, Mr. Paquet taught economics at Carleton University, where, in the 1970s, he was the first Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies and
Research. He has authored or edited more than 50 books, and written hundreds of scientific papers, reports, or chapters in books. He also penned an equal number of articles in various magazines and newspapers.
He was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada in 1976, into the Royal Society of Arts of London in 1989, and into the Order of Canada in 1992. He has received the Jacques-Rousseau medal for his research of an interdisciplinary nature, and the Esdras-Minville medal for the corpus of his work in social sciences. He has been president of a number of academic associations, and recipient of other honours, including the Commemorative Medal for the 125th Anniversary of Confederation in 1992, the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002, and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012. From 2003 to 2005, he was president of the Royal Society of Canada.