Regional municipalities (or regions) are upper-tier municipalities that generally have more servicing responsibilities than the counties. They generally provide the following services: maintenance and construction of arterial roads, transit, policing, sewer and water systems, waste disposal, region-wide land use planning and development, as well as 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, but no single centre is overwhelmingly dominant over the others.
Current regional municipalities in Ontario, with regional seats listed in brackets:
Although Oxford County and the District Municipality of Muskoka are not called regions, they are defined as regional municipalities under Part 1, Section 1 of the Ontario Municipal Act, 2001.
Between 1998 and 2001, four regional municipalities that were dominated by a single city were amalgamated. In 1998, the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto became the amalgamated City of Toronto. In 2001, the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton became the City of Ottawa, the Regional Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth became the City of Hamilton, and the Regional Municipality of Sudbury became the City of Greater Sudbury. At the same time, the Regional Municipality of Haldimand-Norfolk was split into Haldimand County and Norfolk County.
Durham (Whitby)
Halton (Milton)
Muskoka District (Bracebridge)
Niagara (Thorold)
Oxford County (Woodstock)
Peel (Brampton)
Waterloo (Kitchener)
York (Newmarket) Regional municipalities
Counties have fewer responsibilities than regions, as the lower-tier municipalities (cities, towns, villages, townships) within the counties typically provide the majority of municipal services to their residents. The responsibilities of county governments are generally limited to the following: maintenance and construction of arterial roads, health and social services, and county land use planning. Counties are only found in Southern Ontario.
Counties may be as large as regional municipalities in population, but their population density is generally lower (although not as low as in a district.) Counties may include major cities, such as London, Kingston and Windsor, but these cities have generally not evolved into urban agglomerations with other communities, as in regions and "megacities".
Counties may also include separated municipalities, communities that are considered part of the county for census purposes but are not administratively connected to the county. Municipalities are separated when regional or single-tier status is not appropriate for the municipality's population patterns, but their population is still large enough that it may adversely affect the county's ability to provide services to its smaller communities.
County seats in brackets.
(* Frontenac County exists only by name, and was actually abolished in 1998. While the Frontenac Management Unit does oversee a limited number of services shared by Kingston and the townships, it does not exist as a typical Ontario county.)
Bruce County (Walkerton)
Dufferin County (Orangeville)
Elgin County (St. Thomas)
Essex County (Windsor)
Frontenac County* (Kingston)
Grey County (Owen Sound)
Haliburton County (Minden)
Hastings County (Belleville)
Huron County (Goderich)
Lambton County (Wyoming)
Lanark County (Perth)
Leeds and Grenville United Counties (Brockville)
Lennox and Addington County (Greater Napanee)
Middlesex County (London)
Northumberland County (Cobourg)
Perth County (Stratford)
Peterborough County (Peterborough)
Prescott and Russell United Counties (L'Orignal)
Renfrew County (Pembroke)
Simcoe County (Barrie)
Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry United Counties (Cornwall)
Wellington County (Guelph)
DistrictsSubdivisions of Canada
List of Ontario census divisions by population
List of communities in Ontario
