County constabulary

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. Most cities which are not served by a county constabulary are either independent of any county or part of a different type of upper-tier local government area.

The province of Vancouver Island has nine 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 population of nearly seven million, which is known officially as the Lower Mainland Police Area.