Joseph Gérard Maurice Baril (September 22 1943-) was a General in the Canadian Armed Forces, a Military Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General & head of the Military Division of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations of the United Nations from 1992 to 1997, and Chief of the Defence Staff in Canada from 1997 to 2001.

He was born in Saint-Albert-de-Warwick , Quebec in 1943 and studied at the University of Ottawa from 1961 to 1964, becoming an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces in 1963.

From 1968 to 1971, he served with the Canadian Airborne Regiment in Valcartier, Quebec and Edmonton, Alberta. He commanded land forces in Cyprus and Lahr, Germany , served at Department of National Defence headquarters in Ottawa and as Commander of the Combat Training Centre at CFB Gagetown.

He was appointed head of the Military Division of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) at the UN in June 1992. In January 1994, the DPKO received a message sent directly to Baril by (then) Major-General Romeo Dallaire, force commander of UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda. The message, based on an informant's confession, and breaking usual UN protocol as it was sent directly to the DPKO as opposed to being routed through the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the UN, warned of increasing militia activity and presence of several arms caches in Rwanda's capital, Kigali. When the Rwandan Genocide broke out in April 2004 and Belgian peacekeepers, as well as the Prime Minister of the interim government, Agathe Uwilingiyimana was killed, the UN Security Council voted for a drastic reduction in the size of the peacekeeping forces. This culminated the slaughter of an estimated 937,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates by Hutu extremist militia- and government forces in Rwanda. Baril was also accused of mishandling the refugee crisis in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1997.

In September 1997, Baril was appointed Chief of the Defence Staff by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. He retired from the Canadian Forces on July 18 2001.

In 2002, he led the Canadian board of inquiry into the "friendly fire" incident on April 17, 2002 near Kandahar, Afghanistan.