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Public Service Alliance of Canada

labour union

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ2838056
Source-derived summary

The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC; French: Alliance de la Fonction publique du Canada, AFPC) a Canadian public sector labour union. It is the largest union in the Canadian federal public sector. PSAC members work in every province and territory, and also work abroad in embassies and consulates.

Many of PSAC's some 200,000 members work for the federal public service, crown corporations, or agencies as immigration officers, fisheries officers, food inspectors, customs officers, national defence civilian employees, and the like. However, an increasing number of PSAC members work in non-federal sectors: in women's shelters, universities, security agencies and casinos. In Northern Canada, PSAC represents most unionized workers employed in the Yukon, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.

PSAC is headquartered in Ottawa with 23 regional offices across Canada. PSAC's Ottawa headquarters building, designed in 1968 by Paul Schoeler, is a notable example of modernist architecture in Ottawa.

History

PSAC was formed when the Civil Service Association of Canada, led by Calbert Best, and Civil Service Federation of Canada, led by Claude Edwards, agreed to merge.

Bargaining

PSAC signed its first collective agreements with Treasury Board in 1968.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Public Service Alliance of Canada” as labour union. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Public, Service and Alliance.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1968—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1966. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Public, Service and Alliance providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Public Service Alliance of Canada”, the useful work is to connect “labour union” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2838056. VIAF identifies the subject as 143915920. The Library of Congress control number is n82038481. 1 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Public Service Alliance of Canada”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Public Service Alliance of Canada primary sources, Public Service Alliance of Canada archive and Public research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Public Service Alliance of Canada”?
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  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Public Service Alliance of Canada” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.