Avril Benoît is a Canadian broadcaster best known for her radio programmes and documentaries on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In 2006, after two decades in journalism, she left the CBC to join Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders Canada as director of communications. She is now the host of the critically acclaimed MSF "Frontline Reports" podcast.
Benoît's documentaries from Kenya, Burundi, India and Brazil aired on CBC Radio One's flagship show, The Current. Her hour-long television documentary Slum Cities: a Shifting World aired on CBC News: Correspondent on CBC Newsworld. She contributed to Dispatches and Global Village, was host of Ontario Morning and was the daytime voice of CBC Radio One on Sirius Satellite Radio.
In 2004-2005 she was the Knowlton Nash Fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto. Her graduate research focussed on human rights, global governance and official development assistance.
From 1999 to 2004, Benoît hosted and produced Here and Now, CBC Radio One's newsmagazine weekday afternoons on CBLA-FM in Toronto. She co-hosted, with Michael Enright, CBC Radio One's former flagship show This Morning from 1997-1999. Before that she hosted an open-line show on CJAD in Montreal and was a political commentator. Throughout her career, Benoît anchored numerous breaking news specials – from the 2003 North America blackout and the SARS outbreak in the same year, to military conflicts, election nights and more.
She worked at CBC-TV in Montreal for five years, as a current affairs writer-broadcaster and host. Benoît's career includes stints as host of a prime time interview show on the W Network, and as reporter and host for local CBC Radio shows in Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City. She has also worked for the Canadian Forces Network in Germany, for CHIN-FM multi-cultural station in Toronto and for a small radio station in Smiths Falls. Her print background includes covering the 1990 presidential elections in Haiti for The Globe and Mail, writing arts features for NUVO magazine, and editing The Record daily newspaper in Sherbrooke.
Benoît is a bilingual native of Ottawa, Ontario and Mont-Tremblant, Quebec.
She served on the advisory board of the education fund Give Girls a Chance from 2003 to 2006. She has been a Ditchley Foundation participant.