Regional Municipality - Ontario

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 RMs) 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 four 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.