The Drawing Canvas is an area that, when selected, is shown on the screen as a box with a heavily lined border, containing one or more elements of your publication.
When you import a document from Microsoft Word into Microsoft Publisher, and the document contains objects that were on the Drawing Canvas in Word, the graphics might appear on the Drawing Canvas in Publisher.
In a publication, the objects on the Drawing Canvas act as a group. You can resize them and move them all together. The Drawing Canvas itself can also be formatted and resized.
You can also drag objects off the Drawing Canvas, and work with them directly on the page in Publisher.