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Quarantine Act

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.

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Vaccination and Vaccine Hesitancy in Canada (Plain-Language Summary)

A vaccine is put into the body (usually through injection) to make people immune from a disease. Another word for immune is “protect.” Vaccine hesitancy occurs when people will not take a vaccine, or they wait to take a vaccine. Vaccines prevent millions of deaths each year. But many individuals still do not want to take vaccines. As a consequence, some diseases have reappeared. And it can stop herd immunity. Herd immunity happens when most people are immune from a disease. Herd immunity stops the spread of disease. The World Health Organization says that vaccine hesitancy is a serious threat. In fact, it stated that it is one of the “Top Ten Threats to Global Health.”

This article is a plain-language summary of Vaccination and Vaccine Hesitancy in Canada. If you are interested in reading about this topic in more depth, please see our full-length entry, Vaccination and Vaccine Hesitance in Canada.

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Fossil Plants

"Plant" refers to familiar land plants, and also to aquatic plants, mosses, liverworts and algae plants. Although not technically plants, fungi and bacteria are often included. Palaeobotany is the study of ancient plant life using fossil evidence. Plant fossils are found coast-to-coast in Canada, from 45-million-year-old mosses in British Columbia to fossil forests on Axel Heiberg and Ellesmere islands in the Canadian Arctic.

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Pollution

Pollution can be defined as the release of any material, energy or organism that may cause immediate or long-term harmful effects to the natural ENVIRONMENT. Pollution was viewed initially as the unsightly mess or visible environmental damage resulting from careless disposal of various materials.

Macleans

Olivieri Medical Dispute Settled

This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on February 8, 1999. Partner content is not updated.

On all sides, the relief was obvious. Last week, the poisonous, 2 ½-year feud that pitted internationally acclaimed blood researcher Dr. Nancy Olivieri against the prestige and power of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children ended in a face-saving compromise.

Macleans

CANDU Flawed

This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on August 25, 1997. Partner content is not updated.

In the belly of the nuclear beast, the massive domes of the reactors rise ominously to a height of more than 45 m, their radioactive interiors visible only through the thick windows of airlocks.

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Biomass Energy

Biomass energy, or bioenergy, is the energy stored in biomass — that is, nonfossil organic materials such as wood, straw, vegetable oils and wastes from forestry, agriculture and industry, as well as municipal solid waste.

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Mineral Resources

Minerals are naturally-occurring, homogeneous geological formations. Unlike fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas, minerals are inorganic compounds, meaning they are not formed of animal or plant matter.

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Transportation

The importance of transportation to a trading nation as vast as Canada cannot be underestimated. The great distances between mines, farms, forests and urban centres make efficient transport systems essential to the economy so that natural and manufactured goods can move freely through domestic and international markets. Transportation has and will continue to play an important role in the social and political unity of Canada.

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Bioethics

The word bioethics is formed from the Greek word for life (bios) and the traditional word for the systematic study of right conduct (ethics).

Macleans

Gates Under Siege

They came by the thousands last week, a ragtag army of pasty-faced computer geeks in sandals and T-shirts, streaming into the San Jose Convention Center in California's Silicon Valley to honour the 29-year-old hacker from Helsinki who might just be the one to dethrone Bill Gates.

Macleans

Blackout Hits Ontario and Seven US States

This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on August 25, 2003. Partner content is not updated.

IT TOOK just nine seconds to turn the clock back a century. A voltage fluctuation in some Ohio transmission lines. Then, at 4:11 p.m. n a muggy August Thursday, a faster-than-you-can-blink reversal in the flow of current, suddenly sucking away a city's worth of power from the eastern half of the continent.

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Royal Commission on Energy

The Royal Commission on Energy (Borden Commission) was established (1957) by the government of John DIEFENBAKER under chairman Henry BORDEN, the president of Brazilian Traction, Light and Power Co, Ltd, to investigate "a number of questions relating to sources of energy.

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Chemistry

Chemistry, the science concerned primarily with the structure and properties of matter and with the transformation of one form of matter into another. Now one of the most theoretically and methodologically sophisticated sciences, chemistry had its beginnings in medieval alchemy.