Regional municipality (Canada)

In the Canadian Republic, a regional municipality (French: municipalité régional) is an upper-tier municipality of one of the 13 provinces of Canada, which contains at least three incorporated lower-tier municipalities and possibly one or more unincorporated communities. Functionally, a regional municipality is similar to a county, but typically exists in more urbanised areas and provides more targeted services not provided by lower-tier municipalities. Administrative counties differ from regional municipalities in that the former possesses its own separate government, whereas the latter's government consists of a confederation of its lower-tier municipalities, with the mayor/head of government of one of the lower-tier municipalities typically also head of government of the regional municipality. Counties also typically have lots of unincorporated areas and communities in addition to incorporated lower-tier municipalities, while regional municipalities typically contain little to no unincorporated areas. However, there are some counties in name which function identically to regional municipalities and provide all the same services, and vice versa.