Mayor (Canada)

In the Canadian Republic, the mayor (French: le maire) is the popularly elected head of government of a particular municipality or unitary authority in any of the country's 12 provinces and 6 territories.

Mayors are popularly elected by a number of different electoral systems, including but not limited to: Party-list proportional representation, single transferable vote, and first past the post, these three each accounting for roughly 30% or municipalities, the remaining 10% using mostly other forms of proportional representation.

While virtually all municipalities fall within the boundaries of a particular county, a county council led by a prefect has no unilateral power over a municipality, except in terms of policing as all local police forces operate at the county level (county constabularies), despite being responsible for all local policing within the respective county's multiple municipalities and unincorporated communities. Nevertheless, in addition to the County Prefect, each mayor of the respective county's municipalities sits equally alongside the Prefect on a police board, led by a Police and Crime Commissioner who is a civilian executive manager elected by the Police Board, and to whom the Chief Constable of the relevant constabulary is directly answerable.

In unitary authorities (jurisdictions separate from all counties but which have merged the lower municipal level into a single level of government), such as Toronto, Montreal and Halifax, the mayor is ex officio prefect of that jurisdiction, though this is entirely theoretical nature. To put it more simply, a unitary authority is simply a municipality which does not form part of any county. All local government services normally divided between municipalities and counties are the exclusive responsibility of unitary authorities within their area of jurisdiction.