The Rick Mercer Report, a weekly half-hour topical comedy, debuted on CBC Television in January 2004 and returns for a 10th season in the fall of 2012. The most-watched Canadian television comedy, the show garners well over a million viewers every week. During the 2011-12 season, The Rick Mercer Report won 'the Best Comedy Program or Series' Gemini Award and Rick received ACTRA Toronto's 2012 Award of Excellence and the King Clancy Award from the Canadian Foundation for Physically Disabled Persons.

Rick Mercer began his career in comedy performing and writing with a series of one-man stage shows, beginning with Show Me the Button, which debuted at the National Arts Centre in 1990 and went on to tour the country. Subsequent theatre were I've Killed Before, I'll Kill Again (1992) and Canada: A Good Place to Hide (1995).

Mercer launched his television career in 1994 as one of the creators, performers, and writers on the hit topical weekly show This Hour Has 22 Minutes. In 1998 he joined Gerald Lunz and Michael Donovan to create the satirical dramatic series Made In Canada, where he again starred and contributed as a writer. In 2001 his CBC Television special Talking To Americas became the highest rated Canadian comedy special of all time with 2.7 million viewers. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, and the Los Angeles Times all ran articles about the impact of Talking to Americans and Mercer went on to discuss it on ABC's Nightline and NBC's The Today Show.

Rick Mercer has received over 25 Gemini Awards for television writing and performance. He was given the Sir Peter Ustinov Award at the Banff Television Festival, named Journalist of the Year at the Atlantic Journalism Awards, Artists of the Year from the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council, and has received a number of Canadian Comedy Awards. He is the sole civilian recipient of the Canadian Arms Forces Commander Land Force, Command Commendation in recognition of his support of Canadian peacekeepers, and in 2004 he received the National Arts Centre Award at the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards.

Mercer went to Afghanistan in the fall of 2003 to entertain the troops and tape Rick Mercer's Christmas in Kabul, a special for CBC Television. He has returned twice to Afghanistan to visit the Canadian Forces.

As a solo performer he has hosted the East Coast Music Awards, The Gemini Awards, Juno Awards, the history series It Seems Like Yesterday, the annual Canada Day show from Parliament Hill, and in 2008 he hosted the CBC Television special The Next Great Prime Minister for the second time.

Mercer's writing has been published in Time, Maclean's, Globe and Mail, and the National Post. His first book, Streeters, hit the top of the Globe and Mail's best-seller list, and his second book, Rick Mercer Report: The Book, published in the fall of 2007, also went to the top of the national best-seller list.

He has appeared in the movies The Vacant Lot, Understanding Bliss, Secret National, and Bon Cop, Bad Cop.

In 2006 Rick and Belinda Stronach founded the charity Spread the Net, which raises funds to stop the spread of malaria by providing mosquito nets for African children.

Rick holds Honorary Doctorates from Memorial University, Laurentian University, University of British Columbia, McMaster University, Bishop's University and in 2012 receives an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Guelph.

Rick Mercer is a native of St. John's, Nfld.