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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).

Illness and disease affect everyone. Individuals alone cannot prevent illness and disease. To do so it is important to focus on communities, not just individuals. The purpose of public health is to protect communities against illness and disease. This, in turn, helps individuals. This article is a plain-language summary of Public Health in Canada. If you are interested in reading about this topic in more depth, please see our full-length entry, Public Health in Canada.

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.

Public school refers to provincially controlled, tax-supported schools which are normally available to school-age children who live within a school district.

To some, it heralded a decisive victory for fiscal sensibility and grassroots democracy. To others, it was a crushing defeat.This article was originally published in Maclean's Magazine on February 3, 1997

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.

Puffin is a common name for 3 species of medium-sized seabirds of the Auk family.

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

The pulp and paper industry consists of manufacturing enterprises that convert predominantly woody plant material into a wide variety of pulps, papers and paperboards. The Canadian industry began in the 1800s, and has undergone revolutionary changes over the years. Most recently, the move from newsprint to electronic media caused the industry to decline; however, pulp and paper remains a fundamental part of the Canadian economy, especially for remote and northern communities.

Pulse crops are members of the family Leguminosae or Fabaceae (see LEGUME). The term "pulse crops" generally refers to those plant species harvested primarily for dry seed that is used as both human food and animal feed.