Single-tier municipality (Canada)

A single-tier municipality (French: municipalité à seul niveau), also known as an independent municipality (municipalité indépendante), is a type of Canadian municipality.

In the 13 provinces of the Canadian Republic, most communities exist within a two-tier system of local government, consisting of upper-tier and lower-tier municipalities. Upper-tier municipalities, which were historically all known officially as (administrative) counties but today consist of both counties and regional municipalities (also known as regional districts), cover larger areas than lower-tier municipalities, which are typically representative of individual towns or cities.

By contrast, the single-tier municipality is a less common form of incorporated municipality which, like an upper-tier municipality, forms the first level of administrative division of a province, but which, unlike an upper-tier municipality, has no lower-tier municipalities within its area of jurisdiction, instead possessing a single unitary municipal government responsible for all public services below the provincial level within the municipality. This type of municipality is common to large cities, such as Toronto, Canada's most populous city, as well as Halifax, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Calgary, among others.

All current single-tier municipalities in Canada are officially incorporated as "cities" (villes); for example, the City of Toronto or Ville de Montréal. Some other large cities, notably Montréal and Vancouver, Canada's second- and third-most populous cities, are not single-tier municipalities, instead functioning as the most populous lower-tier municipality within an upper-tier municipality and the centre of a metropolitan area extending into the rest of the upper-tier municipality and perhaps parts of neighbouring municipalities.

Within Canada's five territories (which are separate from the provinces), the lower-/upper-tier system is not used, meaning that all incorporated municipalities within a territory are single-tier municipalities.