Administrative county (Canada)

An administrative county (French: comté administratif), usually simply known as a county (comté), or less commonly as a county proper (comté propre) when distinguished from a ceremonial county, is the upper tier of local government within the 13 provinces and five territories of the Canadian Republic; the lower tier is a municipality, of which each county has several, often in addition to several unincorporated communities which rely solely on the county for all local government services.

As county boundaries have changed over time, in addition to mergers or more often divisions of counties into two or more entities, ceremonial counties were created as a cultural/historical preservative. For example, the Canadian province of British Columbia's most populous region, the Lower Mainland, is a ceremonial county, but actually consists of seven distinct administrative counties.

Administrative counties are for the most part referred to simply as counties, adding the "administrative" prefix only when meant to distinguish from ceremonial counties. This distinction can also be made by referring to administrative counties as "counties proper".