Following his graduation in Electrical Engineering in 1975 from the University of Sherbrooke, Mr. Chouinard worked five years for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in the field of International Technical Relations related to the planning of the Broadcasting Satellite Service (BSS). He joined the Space Technology Division of the Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC) in 1981 where he pursued his involvement in technical and spectrum-orbit utilization studies related to BSS.

In 1986, he joined the newly formed Broadcast Technologies Branch at CRC as the manager of Broadcast Systems Research. In May 1992, he became the director of Broadcast Systems and Communication Networks Research after having acted in this position for a year.

Following reorganization at CRC in April 1993, he occupied the position of Director, Radio Broadcast Technologies Research until April 1998 when he became senior advisor to the President on broadcasting. In 2001, he was seconded to Industry Canada's Spectrum Engineering Branch until accepting his current position as senior manager of the Rural and Remote Broadband Access Program at CRC. .

In his work, Mr. Chouinard has been closely involved in standard setting activities for both Advanced Television (ATV) and digital sound broadcasting systems. He has been involved internationally, representing Canada at the Radiocommunication Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-R) and participating in WorldDAB. In North America, he has participated in the Advanced Television Systems Committee, the Advisory Committee of the US Federal Communications Commission for ATV standardization, and the Digital Audio Radio Committee of the Electronics Industries Association for the standardization of digital audio radio broadcasting. In Canada, he is involved in the national ITU-R organization and the Joint Technical Committee on Advanced Broadcasting. Mr. Chouinard has published a number of papers and made many conference presentations on the above subjects.

He is now heavily involved in the development of the Wireless Regional Area Network standard undertaken by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) under the 802.22 Working Group of which he is the vice-chairman.