Originally from Thunder Bay, Ontario, where his father Roderick Philpot was an alderman of the city of Fort William, Philpot is a graduate of Fort William Collegiate Institute and earned degrees in literature and history from the University of Toronto.
He founded publishing company Baraka Books in 2009 with the support of Denis Vaugeois and Gilles Herman.
Philpot has called into question the testimony of Roméo Dallaire on the Rwandan genocide; his brother is the Montreal lawyer John Philpot, who represented Jean-Paul Akayesu and other defendants accused of genocide and crimes against humanity at the trials conducted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
[2] Philpot was an unsuccessful candidate for the riding of Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne in the 2007 Quebec general election, representing the Parti Québécois.
During the campaign, remarks by Philpot about the Rwandan Genocide were publicised, including the statement: "In none of my writings have I denied that there were mass killings, some even of an ethnic character.