Browse "Politics & Law"

Research, Provincial Organizations All provinces except Newfoundland and PEI have provincial research organizations functioning to promote economic development through the application of modern TECHNOLOGY to regional INDUSTRY.

Public administration has no generally accepted definition. The scope of the subject is so great and so debatable that it is easier to explain than define. Public administration is both a field of study, or a discipline, and a field of practice, or an occupation.

In 1867 Canada's debt was $94 million and it grew slowly until 1915, when WWI pushed the figure to $2.4 billion. During the Great Depression the debt rose to $5 billion, and by the end of WWII it had reached $18 billion.

For many economic purposes, however, the total size of government expenditures is less significant than the components of these expenditures.

The relative importance of government expenditures in the Canadian economy has risen dramatically over the past 70 years, from 15% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the late 1920s to 40% of GDP in 1980 and 50% in the early 1990s.

Illness and disease are communal problems. While individual interventions can have an impact, they are less effective than measures that can be done at a community level. Preventing disease and promoting health among individuals and the population at large is the purpose of public health. Public health is managed by local, regional, national and international public health authorities. Public health interventions include research, prevention, education and emergency preparedness. The most important public health interventions for reducing mortality over the past 150 years have included cleaning the water and air, making roads safer and immunizing against infectious diseases. Ironically, as is often said by public health practitioners, success in public health is often invisible when measures are working. In Canada, the rapid emergence, urgency, severity, global scope and long persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic has put all aspects of public health in the public and political spotlight to a greater degree than ever before. For some Canadians, this has resulted in a loss of confidence in public health authorities, while others have realized the importance of maintaining and funding public health. This is the full-length entry about Public Health in Canada. For a plain-language summary, please see Public Health in Canada (Plain-Language Summary).

The Public Interest Advocacy Centre, a non-profit Ottawa based organization, was founded in 1976. PIAC is primarily concerned with the delivery of important public utilities and services to Canadian consumers and, in particular, vulnerable consumers.

Public ownership refers to government provision of goods and services; the commercial or business activities of the STATE.

Public Policy generally denotes both the general purpose of government action and the views on the best or preferred means of carrying it out; more specifically it refers to government actions designed to achieve one or more objectives.

The public service, also known as the civil service, is the public BUREAUCRACY comprising, in Canada, departmental organizations that support the political executive in the development, implementation and enforcement of government policies.

The Civil Service Commission was established in 1908 under the Civil Service Amendment Act, which introduced the principle of merit as established by competition.

The public sector is highly unionized in Canada. Approximately 80% of those public-sector employees eligible for collective bargaining are covered by collective agreements, compared with only 25% in the private sector.

Public Services and Procurement Canada (formerly Public Works Canada) has been the builder and custodian of the federal government's real property assets since before Confederation. Originally created in 1841, it is also one of the largest departments, assuming the role of the federal government's chief purchasing agent.

Vivian Godfree had just cleared the morning dishes at her Pugwash, N.S., home when her mother called from the British city of Bristol with surprising news - the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to an antiwar movement spawned in the tiny Nova Scotia village where she lives.This article was originally published in Maclean's Magazine on October 23, 1995

Canada adopted quarantine legislation in 1872, five years after Confederation. It was replaced by the current Quarantine Act, which was passed by the Parliament of Canada and received royal assent in 2005. The act gives sweeping powers to the federal health minister to prevent the introduction and spread of communicable diseases. These powers can include health screenings, the creation of quarantine facilities and mandatory isolation orders. The Quarantine Act was introduced in the wake of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) crisis of 2003. It was invoked in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.