Independent municipality (Canada)

In the Canadian Republic, municipalities form the lowest level of government, each representing a specific geographic area, and divided according to the ownership and/or use of the land (public, private or state-owned). An independent municipality (French: municipalité indépendante) is, like Toronto or Ottawa, a unit of local government which is not part of any upper-tier municipality such as a county or regional municipality/district, consists of no lower-tier municipalities and is thus unitary, and which maintains its own relationship with the provincial government at the same level as upper-tier municipalities; like the governments of upper-tier municipalities, the mayor and staff of an independent municipality typically maintains closer contact to the premier, his aides and the rest of the provincial government than lower-tier municipalities.