Visit the Industry Canada website http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ic1.nsf/eng/home. Click on "Programs and Services", then click on "financial services" (in Oct 2012 the link was http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/icgc.nsf/eng/h_07047.html). There are some helpful tabs such as: "Finding Financing" and "Managing Financing". If you were starting a company and needed money, would this information be helpful?
To move from being a private company to a public company means listing stock on the stock market – we say "going to the street", or conducting an IPO Initial Public Offering. Use a search engine to find the stock market in your province in which companies can be listed and find the process by which you issue a "prospectus".