Municipal elections in Canada

Municipal elections in Canada fall within the jurisdiction of the various provinces and territories. Therefore, they occur on different dates, depending on which province they are in. However, municipalities in the same province will usually have their elections on the same day. Unlike most provinces, territories, and the House of Commons, most municipalities have their elections on some sort of a fixed date. Each province has its own nomenclature for municipalities and some have local elections for unincorporated areas which are not technically municipalities. These entities can be called cities, towns, villages, townships, hamlets, parishes and, simply, municipalities, county municipalities, regional county municipalities, municipal districts, regional districts, counties, regional municipalities, specialized municipalities, district municipalities or rural municipalities. Many of these may be used by Statistics Canada as the basis for census divisions or census subdivisions. Municipal elections usually elect a mayor (or reeve) at large, city councillors (or aldermen), and school trustees. Most councils are non-partisan, however, some municipalities (such as Montreal, Quebec City, Longueuil, Vancouver, Surrey, British Columbia and Victoria, British Columbia) do have local political parties. These are municipal in nature, and are rarely affiliated with any provincial or federal parties.

Voting may be done with paper ballots that are hand-counted, or by various forms of electronic voting.

Municipal election chart by province and territory

External links

• Public Service Commissions of Canada - Upcoming Elections

See also

• Canadian electoral calendar, 2012
• Canadian electoral calendar, 2011
• Provincial elections in Canada
• Municipal government in Canada
• Elections in Canada