All municipalities (except cities), whether township, village, parish, or unspecified ones, are functionally and legally identical. The only difference is that the designation might serve to disambiguate between otherwise identically named municipalities, often neighbouring ones. Many such cases have had their names changed, or merged with the identically named nearby municipality since the 1950s, such as the former
Township of Granby and City of Granby merging and becoming the
Town of Granby in 2007. Municipalities are governed primarily by the
Code municipal du Québec (Municipal Code of Québec, R.S.Q. c. C-27.1), The least-populated towns in Quebec (
Barkmere, with a population of about 60, or
L'Île-Dorval, with less than 10) are much smaller than the most populous municipalities of other types (
Saint-Charles-Borromée and
Sainte-Sophie, each with populations of over 13,300). The title city ( code=C) still legally exists, with a few minor differences from that of
ville. However it is moot since there are no longer any cities in existence.
Dorval and
Côte Saint-Luc had the status of city when they were amalgamated into
Montreal on January 1, 2002 as part of the
municipal reorganization in Quebec; however, when re-constituted as independent municipalities on January 1, 2006, it was with the status of town () (although the municipal government of Dorval still uses the name Cité de Dorval). Prior to January 1, 1995, the code for municipalité was not M but rather SD (
sans désignation; that is, unqualified municipality). == Aboriginal local municipal units ==