He was named the fourth Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate on April 28, 2009.
DesRuisseaux previously won the Governor General's Award for French language poetry in 1989 for his collection Monème.
"His career-long fascination with Canada's literary traditions and history make him an excellent choice to engage us, as Canadians, in dialogue about the importance of verse in our national culture," Speaker of the Senate of Canada Noel Kinsella said about DesRuisseaux.
DesRuisseaux wrote the Livre des proverbes québécois and Dictionnaire des expressions québécoises, chosen by the Quebec Association for Intercultural Education as a work representative of Quebec's popular culture.
[1][3] In 2017, it was revealed that in his volume of French language poetry, Tranches De Vie, DesRuisseaux had plagiarized a number of English language authors, including Maya Angelou, Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNeice, Charles Bukowski, Ted Kooser, and Tupac Shakur.