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OP Regarding what Canadians do for collective nouns - the CBC has an article about this on their website which attempts to clarify the style they follow: http://cbc.ca/news/indepth/words/plurals.html
I looked up "person" and "people" in Atomica, and the one thing which stood out from their usage notes was that people is plural, and has no corresponding singular. However, in common usage in some situations (as in (a) and (b) above), it behaves as though "person" is its corresponding singular form.
But I distinctly remember being taught by various "authorities" (whoever takes it upon themselves to correct a child's speech) that "The plural of person is people". And in most uses a child encounters, it does work out that way.
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