In
Ontario, regional municipalities always contain lower-tier municipalities within them and were created to provide common services to mixed urban and rural divisions in the way that counties typically provide common services to fully rural municipalities (this paradoxically gives many of the largest urban areas in the province a subtle semi-rural character, such as the presence of numbered
"county" roads with rural-type signage within them). Today, only certain predominantly urban divisions containing two or more urban municipalities but lack a defined
core city are given the status of a regional municipality; most census divisions instead retain the status of a county or a district. However, there is one
district municipality, the
District Municipality of Muskoka that has the same structure as a regional municipality, but is predominantly rural or wilderness. The specific relationship of a regional government and the cities, towns, townships and villages within its borders is determined by provincial legislation; typically the regional municipality provides many core
services such as
police protection,
waste management and (in some RMs)
public transit. Similar to counties, they also provide infrastructure for
major roads,
sewers, and
bridges and also handle
social services. Organization of regional government has occasionally been controversial, as council membership is sometimes determined by the constituent municipalities rather than elected directly. The province's first regional municipality, the
Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, was created in 1954, by severing
Toronto and its surrounding suburban townships from the southern portion of
York County. It was the only regional municipality in the province until the
Regional Municipality of Ottawa–Carleton was created in 1969 by restructuring
Ottawa and the whole of
Carleton County. Between 1970 and 1974, several more regional municipalities were created by the government of
Bill Davis, mostly by restructuring the entirety of existing counties. The later government of
Mike Harris subsequently dissolved four regional municipalities with a dominant central city that formed
metropolitan areas into amalgamated single-tier cities. In 1998, the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto became the amalgamated
City of Toronto, and in 2001, three other regional municipalities—Ottawa–Carleton,
Hamilton–Wentworth and
Sudbury—were similarly amalgamated into the single-tier cities of Ottawa,
Hamilton and
Greater Sudbury. The Harris government also split the
Regional Municipality of Haldimand–Norfolk (an anomalous predominantly-rural RM) into two separate single-tier municipalities—the Town of Haldimand and the Town of Norfolk, which immediately changed their names to
Haldimand County and
Norfolk County. In January 2019, the provincial government announced a review of the eight regional municipalities in the province (
Durham,
Halton,
Muskoka,
Niagara,
Oxford,
Peel,
Waterloo, and
York) and
Simcoe County, as well as their constituent lower-tier municipalities. The review will be headed by special advisers Ken Seiling and Michael Fenn, who will conduct consultations with politicians, civil servants, business owners, and residents of the nine affected municipalities. In 2022, the
More Homes Built Faster Act received
royal assent and will remove most planning responsibilities from seven upper-tier municipalities (Durham, Halton, Niagara, Peel, Simcoe, Waterloo, and York) at a still undetermined date. == Quebec ==