Four provinces and territories in Canada have legislation that allow municipalities to conduct a municipal census. These include the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan and the territories of Nunavut and Yukon. Of these four provinces and territories, municipalities in Alberta were the only ones that exercise the option to conduct a municipal census as of 2006.

Alberta has provincial legislation allowing its municipalities to conduct municipal censuses between April 1 and June 30 inclusive. Municipalities choose to conduct their own censuses for multiple reasons such as to better inform municipal service planning and provision, to capitalize on per capita based grant funding from higher levels of government, or to simply update their populations since the last federal census.