County constabulary (Canada)

In many provinces (but not territories) of the Canadian Republic, upper-tier local government divisions known as counties have a county constabulary, which is the territorial police force responsible for providing all or the majority of local policing within the county, most commonly at both the county (upper-tier) and municipal (lower-tier) level. Municipalities which are not served by a county constabulary are either independent of any county or part of a municipal or regional district, the former of which would have their own police department and the latter of which would contract with the appropriate provincial police to provide local (municipal) law enforcement services.

The province of Vancouver Island has eleven counties, each county having its own county constabulary responsible for all policing within the respective county, except provincial-level law enforcement which is handled by the Vancouver Island Provincial Police (VIPP) and to a lesser extent the Vancouver Island Sheriff Service (VISS); this is typical of all provinces, which have both a dedicated provincial police and a provincial-level sheriff service.

Some county constabularies cover more than one county as part of their jurisdictional responsibility. The most extreme example of this is the Lower Mainland Constabulary (LMC) in British Columbia, which is fully responsible for seven adjacent counties constituting a metropolitan area with a population of nearly seven million, which is known officially as the Lower Mainland Police Area. Another example is the Toronto Metropolitan Police Department, which covers the city of Toronto (a municipality independent of any county) and the four adjacent counties of Halton, Peel, York and Durham.

The only unique police departments exclusively at the municipal level of government are those established by unitary authorities, which constitute all areas outside of counties.