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Regional municipality
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A Regional Municipality (or Region) is a type of Canadian municipal government similar to and at the same municipal government level as a county, although the specific structure and servicing responsibilities may vary from place to place. Regional municipalities were formed in highly populated areas where it was considered more efficient to provide certain services, such as water, emergency services, and waste management over an area encompassing more than one local municipality.
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Encyclopedia
A Regional Municipality (or Region) is a type of Canadian municipal government similar to and at the same municipal government level as a county, although the specific structure and servicing responsibilities may vary from place to place. Regional municipalities were formed in highly populated areas where it was considered more efficient to provide certain services, such as water, emergency services, and waste management over an area encompassing more than one local municipality. For this reason, regions may be involved in providing services to residents and businesses.
Regional municipalities, where they include smaller municipalities within their boundaries, are sometimes referred to as "Upper-tier" municipalities. Regional municipalities generally have more servicing responsibilities than counties. Typical services include maintenance and construction of arterial roads, transit, policing, sewer and water systems, waste disposal, region-wide land use planning and development and health and social services.
Regions are typically more urbanized than counties. Regional municipalities are usually implemented in census divisions where an interconnected cluster of urban centres forms the majority of the division's area and population.
Alberta
In Alberta, Wood Buffalo, Strathcona County, and Crowsnest Pass are specialized regional municipalites. This means they have one unified municipal government that controls all urban and rural areas within their boundaries.
Nova Scotia
In Nova Scotia, regional municipalities are a single level of government, and provide all municipal services to their communities. As they include both urban and rural areas, they are not called cities, towns or villages nor do they refer as a place on a map or for services such as the mail. (See Halifax Regional Municipality, Cape Breton Regional Municipality, Region of Queens Municipality). Such municipalities in Nova Scotia take over the area and name of a county. Counties still exist as a geographic division but only contain a single municipality.
Ontario
In Ontario, regional municipalities were created to provide common services to urban and rural municipalities in the way that counties typically provide common services to rural municipalities. Only certain predominantly urban divisions are given the status of a regional municipality in Ontario; most census divisions instead retain the status of a county or a district.
The specific relationship of a regional government and the cities, towns, townships and villages within its borders is determined by provincial legislation; typically the regional municipality provides many core services such as police protection, waste management and (in some RM's) public transit. Similar to counties, they also provide infrastructure for main roads, sewers, and bridges and also handle social services. Organization of regional government has occasionally been controversial, as council membership is sometimes determined by the constituent municipalities rather than elected directly.
The province's first regional municipality, the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, was created in 1954. It was the only regional municipality in the province until the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton was created in 1969. Between 1970 and 1974, several more regional municipalities were created by the government of Bill Davis.
The later government of Mike Harris subsequently dissolved the four largest regional municipalities into amalgamated single-tier cities. In 1998, the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto became the amalgamated City of Toronto, and in 2001, three other regional municipalities — Ottawa-Carleton, Hamilton-Wentworth and Sudbury — were similarly amalgamated into the single-tier cities of Ottawa, Hamilton and Greater Sudbury.
The Harris government also split the former Regional Municipality of Haldimand-Norfolk into two separate single-tier municipalities, Haldimand County and Norfolk County.
Quebec
In Quebec, regional county municipalities or RCMs (French, municipalités régionales de comté, MRC) have constituted the 'county' level of government for the entire province since the early 1990s.
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