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 municipality (local government area) in the Canadian Republic.

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, the latter typically representative of individual towns or cities. An upper-tier municipality consists of several lower-tier municipalities (typically 3 to 10); the upper-tier municipality provides regionalised services which are shared by its lower-tier municipalities, the latter of which are responsible for more localised services.

By contrast, the single-tier municipality is a less common form of incorporated municipality which, like an upper-tier municipality, forms a first level administrative division of its 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 its geographical area of jurisdiction. 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. The federal capital of Ottawa is also organised as a single-tier municipality, the only difference being that, as it remains outside the jurisdiction of any province or territory, the level of government immediately above Ottawa's municipal government is the Canadian federal government.

All current single-tier municipalities in the Canadian provinces are officially incorporated as "cities" (villes); for example, the "City of Toronto". 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 parts of neighbouring upper-tier 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. In the territories, a single-tier municipality (which is just referred to as a municipality, as no other type exists) can be incorporated as a city, town, township, village, hamlet, or regional district (which is not the same as the provinces' regional municipalities/districts, which are upper-tier municipalities). Some municipalities in the four Arctic territories are instead incorporated under tribal-based indigenous titles, such as illoqarfik (town) or illu (village). As there is only one level of local government in the territories, the territories have only a single level of administrative divisions (the municipalities).