Canada
Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres, making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Canada's southern border with the United States is the world's longest bi-national land border, its capital is Ottawa, its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto and Vancouver. As a whole, Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its land area being dominated by forest and tundra, its population is urbanized, with over 80 percent of its inhabitants concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, many near the southern border. Canada's climate varies across its vast area, ranging from arctic weather in the north, to hot summers in the southern regions, with four distinct seasons. Various indigenous peoples have inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Beginning in the 16th century and French expeditions explored, settled, along the Atlantic coast.
As a consequence of various armed conflicts, France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces; this began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. This widening autonomy was highlighted by the Statute of Westminster of 1931 and culminated in the Canada Act of 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy in the Westminster tradition, with Elizabeth II as its queen and a prime minister who serves as the chair of the federal cabinet and head of government; the country is a realm within the Commonwealth of Nations, a member of the Francophonie and bilingual at the federal level. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, education.
It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Canada's long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. A developed country, Canada has the sixteenth-highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the twelfth-highest ranking in the Human Development Index, its advanced economy is the tenth-largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade networks. Canada is part of several major international and intergovernmental institutions or groupings including the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the G7, the Group of Ten, the G20, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the etymological origins of Canada, the name is now accepted as coming from the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word kanata, meaning "village" or "settlement".
In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona. Cartier used the word Canada to refer not only to that particular village but to the entire area subject to Donnacona. From the 16th to the early 18th century "Canada" referred to the part of New France that lay along the Saint Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named the Canadas. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the legal name for the new country at the London Conference, the word Dominion was conferred as the country's title. By the 1950s, the term Dominion of Canada was no longer used by the United Kingdom, which considered Canada a "Realm of the Commonwealth"; the government of Louis St. Laurent ended the practice of using'Dominion' in the Statutes of Canada in 1951. In 1982, the passage of the Canada Act, bringing the Constitution of Canada under Canadian control, referred only to Canada, that year the name of the national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day.
The term Dominion was used to distinguish the federal government from the provinces, though after the Second World War the term federal had replaced dominion. Indigenous peoples in present-day Canada include the First Nations, Métis, the last being a mixed-blood people who originated in the mid-17th century when First Nations and Inuit people married European settlers; the term "Aboriginal" as a collective noun is a specific term of art used in some legal documents, including the Constitution Act 1982. The first inhabitants of North America are hypothesized to have migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge and arrived at least 14,000 years ago; the Paleo-Indian archeological sites at Old Crow Flats and Bluefish Caves are two of the oldest sites of human habitation in Canada. The characteristics of Canadian indigenous societies included permanent settlements, complex societal hierarchies, trading networks; some of these cultures had collapsed by the time European explorers arrived in the late 15th and early 16th centuries and have only been discovered through archeological investigations.
The indigenous population at the time of the first European settlements is estimated to have been between 200,000
City
A city is a large human settlement. Cities have extensive systems for housing, sanitation, land use, communication, their density facilitates interaction between people, government organizations and businesses, sometimes benefiting different parties in the process. City-dwellers have been a small proportion of humanity overall, but following two centuries of unprecedented and rapid urbanization half of the world population now lives in cities, which has had profound consequences for global sustainability. Present-day cities form the core of larger metropolitan areas and urban areas—creating numerous commuters traveling towards city centers for employment and edification. However, in a world of intensifying globalization, all cities are in different degree connected globally beyond these regions; the most populated city proper is Chongqing while the most populous metropolitan areas are the Greater Tokyo Area, the Shanghai area, Jabodetabek. The cities of Faiyum and Varanasi are among those laying claim to longest continual inhabitation.
A city is distinguished from other human settlements by its great size, but by its functions and its special symbolic status, which may be conferred by a central authority. The term can refer either to the physical streets and buildings of the city or to the collection of people who dwell there, can be used in a general sense to mean urban rather than rural territory. A variety of definitions, invoking population, population density, number of dwellings, economic function, infrastructure, are used in national censuses to classify populations as urban. Common population definitions for a city range between 1,500 and 50,000 people, with most U. S. states using a minimum between 5,000 inhabitants. However, some jurisdictions set no such minimums. In the United Kingdom, city status is awarded by the government and remains permanently, resulting in some small cities, such as Wells and St Davids. According to the "functional definition" a city is not distinguished by size alone, but by the role it plays within a larger political context.
Cities serve as administrative, commercial and cultural hubs for their larger surrounding areas. Examples of settlements called city which may not meet any of the traditional criteria to be named such include Broad Top City and City Dulas, Anglesey, a hamlet; the presence of a literate elite is sometimes included in the definition. A typical city has professional administrators and some form of taxation to support the government workers; the governments may be based on heredity, military power, work projects such as canal building, food distribution, land ownership, commerce, finance, or a combination of these. Societies that live in cities are called civilizations; the word city and the related civilization come, via Old French, from the Latin root civitas meaning citizenship or community member and coming to correspond with urbs, meaning city in a more physical sense. The Roman civitas was linked with the Greek "polis"—another common root appearing in English words such as metropolis. Urban geography deals both with their internal structure.
Town siting has varied through history according to natural, technological and military contexts. Access to water has long been a major factor in city placement and growth, despite exceptions enabled by the advent of rail transport in the nineteenth century, through the present most of the world's urban population lives near the coast or on a river. Urban areas as a rule cannot produce their own food and therefore must develop some relationship with a hinterland which sustains them. Only in special cases such as mining towns which play a vital role in long-distance trade, are cities disconnected from the countryside which feeds them. Thus, centrality within a productive region influences siting, as economic forces would in theory favor the creation of market places in optimal mutually reachable locations; the vast majority of cities have a central area containing buildings with special economic and religious significance. Archaeologists refer to this area by the Greek term temenos; these spaces reflect and amplify the city's centrality and importance to its wider sphere of influence.
Today cities have downtown, sometimes coincident with a central business district. Cities have public spaces where anyone can go; these include owned spaces open to the public as well as forms of public land such as public domain and the commons. Western philosophy since the time of the Greek agora has considered physical public space as the substrate of the symbolic public sphere. Public art adorns public spaces. Parks and other natural sites within cities provide residents with relief from the hardness and regularity of typical built environments. Urban structure follows one or more basic patterns: geomorphic, concentric and curvilinear. Physical environment constrains the form in which a city is built. If located on a mountainside, urban structure may rely on winding roads, it may be adapted to its means of subsistence. And it may be set up for optimal defense given the surrounding landscape. Beyond these "geomorphi
Municipality
A municipality is a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. It is to be distinguished from the county, which may encompass rural territory or numerous small communities such as towns and hamlets; the term municipality may mean the governing or ruling body of a given municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district; the term is derived from French Latin municipalis. The English word municipality derives from the Latin social contract municipium, referring to the Latin communities that supplied Rome with troops in exchange for their own incorporation into the Roman state while permitting the communities to retain their own local governments. A municipality can be any political jurisdiction from a sovereign state, such as the Principality of Monaco, to a small village, such as West Hampton Dunes, New York.
The territory over which a municipality has jurisdiction may encompass only one populated place such as a city, town, or village several of such places only parts of such places, sometimes boroughs of a city such as the 34 municipalities of Santiago, Chile. Powers of municipalities range from virtual autonomy to complete subordination to the state. Municipalities may have the right to tax individuals and corporations with income tax, property tax, corporate income tax, but may receive substantial funding from the state. In various countries, municipalities are referred to as "communes", notably in Romance languages such as French commune, Italian comune, Romanian comună, Spanish comuna, in Germanic languages such as German Kommune, Swedish kommun, Faroese kommuna, Norwegian, Danish kommune. However, in Moldova and Romania exist both municipalities and communes, a commune may be part of a municipality. Similar terms include Spanish ayuntamiento called municipalidad, Polish gmina, Dutch/Flemish Gemeente and Luxembourgish Gemeng.
In Australia, the term local government area is used in place of the generic municipality. Here, the "LGA Structure covers only incorporated areas of Australia. Incorporated areas are designated parts of states and territories over which incorporated local governing bodies have responsibility." In Canada, municipalities are local governments established through provincial and territorial legislation within general municipal statutes. Types of municipalities within Canada include cities, district municipalities, municipal districts, parishes, rural municipalities, townships and villes among others; the Province of Ontario has different tiers of municipalities, including lower and single tiers. Types of upper tier municipalities in Ontario include regional municipalities. Nova Scotia has regional municipalities, which include cities, districts, or towns as municipal units. In India, a Municipality or Nagar Palika is an urban local body that administers a city of population 100,000 or more. However, there are exceptions to that, as Municipality were constituted in urban centers with population over 20,000, so all the urban bodies which were classified as Municipality were reclassified as Municipality if their population was under 100,000.
Under the Panchayati Raj system, it interacts directly with the state government, though it is administratively part of the district it is located in. Smaller district cities and bigger towns have a Municipality. Municipality are a form of local self-government entrusted with some duties and responsibilities, as enshrined in the Constitutional Act,1992. In the United Kingdom, the term was used until the 1972 Local Government Act came into effect in 1974 in England and Wales, until 1975 in Scotland and 1976 in Northern Ireland, "both for a city or town, organized for self-government under a municipal corporation, for the governing body itself; such a corporation in Great Britain consists of a head as a mayor or provost, of superior members, as aldermen and councillors". Since local government reorganisation, the unit in England, Northern Ireland and Wales is known as a district, in Scotland as a council area. A district can retain its district title. In Jersey, a municipality refers to the honorary officials elected to run each of the 12 parishes into which it is subdivided.
This is the highest level of regional government in this jurisdiction. In Trinidad and Tobago, "municipality" is understood as a city, town, or other local government unit, formed by municipal charter from the state as a municipal corporation. A town may be awarded borough status and on may be upgraded to city status. Chaguanas, San Fernando, Port of Spain and Point Fortin are the 5 current municipalities in Trinidad and Tobago. In the United States, "municipality" is understood as a city, village, or other local government unit, formed by municipal charter from the state as a municipal corporation. In a state law contex
Municipal government in Canada
In Canada, municipal government is a type of local council authority that provides local services, facilities and infrastructure for communities. Canada has three levels of government. According to Section 92 of the Constitution Act, 1867, "In each Province the Legislature may make Laws in relation to... Municipal Institutions in the Province." There are about 3,700 municipal governments in Canada. Municipal governments are established under provincial/territorial authority. Like many Canadian political institutions, municipal government has its roots in the medieval system of government in England. Famously, the city of Winchester was given its charter in 1185, the granting of freedoms became endorsed in Magna Carta, signed in 1215; the first formal municipality in Canada was the city of Saint John in New Brunswick, which received royal approval in 1785. For municipal government, this began an 50-year hiatus of receiving approval from the government, ending in the 1830s when the issue was placed on the agenda once again.
In 1835, the British parliament passed the Municipal Corporations Act, which specified how municipalities were to function and be elected. The ideas from this law were transferred to Canada by Lord Durham, who submitted a report to then-Governor-General, Lord Sydenham. In late 1840 to early 1841 the governments of what was Canada at the time enacted various acts which established municipal government in all areas of the country. In 1849, the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada approved a Canadian version of the Municipal Corporations Act referred to as the Baldwin Act in honour of its creator, Robert Baldwin, it delegated authority to the municipal governments so they could enact by-laws. It established a hierarchy of types of municipal governments, starting at the top with cities and continued down past towns and townships. Changes to the boundaries of these new governments could be made by petitioning the provincial Municipal Board or by requesting a change through the legislature.
By the early 20th century, Canada was involved in a period of municipal reform. An attempt to distinguish municipal government from the provincial legislature occurred, the municipal governments were compared with a board of directors – this form of government was not for advancing a certain political party's view, it was for sitting down and running it'like a business'; as such, the idea that a larger municipality should have more councillors was the same as having a large board of directors for a larger company. Between the 1920s and the 1960s the municipalities received increased funding from their provincial government parents; this was due to the Great Depression, but further discussion about reform reared its head in the 1970s. In many cities, the system of having a few large wards encompassing many different walks of life was replaced with one ward for every area with different demographics; the arguments over municipal government reform continue, seen in the recent City of Toronto Act 1997 dispute.
Municipal governments are subdivisions of their province. While the municipality has autonomy on most decisions, all by-laws passed by that municipal government are subject to change by the provincial government at any time. An example of a typical municipal government structure can be found in New Brunswick, which played host to the first municipal government in Canada in 1785 at Saint John. In some provinces, several municipalities in a particular area are part of an upper tier of municipal government, which provides more regionally oriented services. Depending on the province, this second tier may be called a county, regional municipality, regional district or regional county municipality. In Nova Scotia, three municipalities are designated as "regional municipalities". A regional municipality is a single municipal government covering an entire historical county including all incorporated towns and cities within the county. Within the three regional municipalities, designations such as "city" and "town" exist only as informal signifiers for chartered towns and cities that used to exist prior to the establishment of the regional municipality.
In Canada the types of municipal government vary between provinces, although they all perform the same functions. The general hierarchy was established in 1849 with the passing of the Municipal Corporations Act; the largest municipalities are called cities, their governments city councils. Smaller governments are called towns, parishes, rural municipalities, townships or hamlets; some may be directly designated as municipalities rather than as a particular type of municipality, but this term is still considered inclusive of all local governments regardless of their status. The term "borough" was used in Metropolitan Toronto, Ontario, to denote suburban municipalities; the Borough of East York was the last municipality to hold this status, relinquishing it upon becoming part of the City of Toronto on January 1, 1998. In Quebec, there is no legal distinction between cities and towns – although an informal and subjective distinction may be observed by English speakers all "cities" and "towns" in Quebec have the same status of ville.
In Quebec, the term borough is used as the English translation of arrondissement, referring to an administrative division of a municipality. Only eight municipalities in Quebec are divided into boroughs; some areas in Canada are unincorporated, meaning that they do not have a municipal government at al
Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island is a province of Canada consisting of the Atlantic island of the same name along with several much smaller islands nearby. PEI is one of the three Maritime Provinces, it is the smallest province of Canada in both land area and population, but it is the most densely populated. Part of the traditional lands of the Mi'kmaq, it became a British colony in the 1700s and was federated into Canada as a province in 1873, its capital is Charlottetown. According to the 2016 census, the province of PEI has 142,907 residents; the backbone of the economy is farming. The island has several informal names: "Garden of the Gulf", referring to the pastoral scenery and lush agricultural lands throughout the province. PEI is one of Canada's older settlements and demographically still reflects older immigration to the country, with Scottish, Irish and French surnames being dominant to this day. PEI is located about 200 kilometres north of Halifax, Nova Scotia, 600 kilometres east of Quebec City.
It consists of 231 minor islands. Altogether, the entire province has a land area of 5,686.03 km2. The main island is 5,620 km2 in size larger than the U. S. state of Delaware. It is the 104th-largest island in Canada's 23rd-largest island. In 1798, the British named the island colony for Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III and the father of Queen Victoria. Prince Edward has been called "Father of the Canadian Crown"; the following island landmarks are named after the Duke of Kent: Prince Edward Battery, Victoria Park, Charlottetown Kent College, Charlottetown Kent Street, Charlottetown West Kent Elementary School Kent Street, GeorgetownIn French, the island is today called Île-du-Prince-Édouard, but its former French name, as part of Acadia, was Île Saint-Jean. The island is known in Scottish Gaelic as Eilean a' Phrionnsa or Eilean Eòin for some Gaelic speakers in Nova Scotia though not on PEI; the island is known in the Mi'kmaq language as Abegweit or Epekwitk translated as "land cradled in the waves".
Prince Edward Island is located in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, west of Cape Breton Island, north of the Nova Scotia peninsula, east of New Brunswick, its southern shore bounds the Northumberland Strait. The island has two urban areas; the larger surrounds Charlottetown Harbour, situated centrally on the island's southern shore, consists of the capital city Charlottetown, suburban towns Cornwall and Stratford and a developing urban fringe. A much smaller urban area surrounds Summerside Harbour, situated on the southern shore 40 km west of Charlottetown Harbour, consists of the city of Summerside; as with all natural harbours on the island and Summerside harbours are created by rias. The island's landscape is pastoral. Rolling hills, reddish white sand beaches, ocean coves and the famous red soil have given Prince Edward Island a reputation as a province of outstanding natural beauty; the provincial government has enacted laws to preserve the landscape through regulation, although there is a lack of consistent enforcement, an absence of province-wide zoning and land-use planning.
Under the Planning Act of the province, municipalities have the option to assume responsibility for land-use planning through the development and adoption of official plans and land use bylaws. Thirty-one municipalities have taken responsibility for planning. In areas where municipalities have not assumed responsibility for planning, the Province remains responsible for development control; the island's lush landscape has a strong bearing on its culture. The author Lucy Maud Montgomery drew inspiration from the land during the late Victorian Era for the setting of her classic novel Anne of Green Gables. Today, many of the same qualities that Montgomery and others found in the island are enjoyed by tourists who visit year-round, they enjoy a variety of leisure activities, including beaches, various golf courses, eco-tourism adventures, touring the countryside, enjoying cultural events in local communities around the island. The smaller, rural communities as well as the towns and villages throughout the province, retain a slower-paced, old-world flavour.
Prince Edward Island has become popular as a tourist destination for relaxation. The economy of most rural communities on the island is based on small-scale agriculture. Industrial farming has increased as businesses consolidate older farm properties; the coastline has a combination of long beaches, red sandstone cliffs, salt water marshes, numerous bays and harbours. The beaches and sandstone cliffs consist of sedimentary rock and other material with a high iron concentration, which oxidises upon exposure to the air; the geological properties of a white silica sand found at Basin Head are unique in the province. Large dune fields on the north shore can be found on barrier islands at the entrances to various bays and harbours
Special Areas Board
The Special Areas Board is the governing body of Alberta's special areas. Special areas are designated rural municipalities similar to a municipal district, the elected advisory councils are overseen by four representatives appointed by the province, under the direct authority of Alberta Municipal Affairs; the three special areas were created in 1938 under the authority of the Special Areas Act as a result of hardship brought upon a particular area in southeastern Alberta during the drought of the 1930s. A special area is not to be confused with a specialized municipality, a different municipal status; the special areas are administered under the provisions of the Special Areas Act. The three special areas are located in southeast Alberta within Census Division 4; the Special Areas Act of 1938 created the six special areas of Tilley East, Berry Creek, Sullivan Lake, Sounding Creek, Neutral Hills, Bow West, special municipal areas. In 1939, these six special areas were consolidated into the four special areas listed below.
The original six special areas included 3.2 million hectares, while the current three only include 2.1 million hectares. Tilley East Special Area, No. 1: The northern part of this special area was withdrawn and added to Berry Creek-Sullivan Lake Special Area in 1941, now forms the portion of Special Area No. 2, south of the Red Deer River. Tilley East was still a special area in 1955, but was not by 1959; this area is now part of Cypress County the Municipal District of Cypress No. 1. Berry Creek-Sullivan Lake Special Area, No. 2: The eastern portion of this special area was withdrawn and added to the Sounding Creek-Neutral Hills Special Area in 1939. The northern part of Tilley East Special Area was added to this special area in 1941, it was renamed Special Area No. 2 in 1959. Sounding Creek-Neutral Hills Special Area, No. 3: The eastern portion of the Berry Creek-Sullivan Lake Special Area was added to this special area in 1939. It was renamed Special Area No. 3 in 1959. In 1969, the northern portion of Special Area No. 3 became Special Area No. 4.
Bow West Special Area, No. 4: This area was still a special area in 1955, but was not by 1959. It is now the Municipal District of Taber. Alberta's three special areas had a combined population totalling 4,499 in 2011. List of census divisions of Alberta List of communities in Alberta List of municipal districts in Alberta List of municipalities in Alberta Special Areas Act 1934, a British act imposed due to hardships Specialized municipalities of Alberta Official website
Municipal corporation
To cities, towns, charter townships and boroughs. The term can be used to describe municipally owned corporations. Municipal incorporation occurs when such municipalities become self-governing entities under the laws of the state or province in which they are located; this event is marked by the award or declaration of a municipal charter. A city charter or town charter or municipal charter is a legal document establishing a municipality, such as a city or town. In Canada, charters are granted by provincial authorities; the Corporation of Chennai is the oldest Municipal Corporation in the world after UK. The title "corporation" was used in boroughs from soon after the Norman conquest until the Local Government Act 2001. Under the 2001 act, county boroughs were renamed "cities" and their corporations became "city councils". After the Partition of Ireland, the corporations in the Irish Free State were Dublin, Cork and Waterford and Drogheda, Sligo and Wexford. Dún Laoghaire gained borough status in 1930 as “The Corporation of Dun Laoghaire".
Galway's borough status, lost in 1840, was restored in 1937. The New Zealand Constitution Act 1852 allowed municipal corporations to be established within the new Provinces of New Zealand; the term fell out of favour following the abolition of the Provinces in 1876. In the United States, such municipal corporations are established by charters that are granted either directly by a state legislature by means of local legislation, or indirectly under a general municipal corporation law after the proposed charter has passed a referendum vote of the affected population. Under the enterprise meaning of the term, municipal corporations are "organisations with independent corporate status, managed by an executive board appointed by local government officials, with majority public ownership"; some MOCs rely on revenue from user fees, distinguishing them from agencies and special districts funded through taxation, although this is not always the case. Municipal corporation follows a process of externalization that requires new skills and orientations from the respective local governments, follow common changes in the institutional landscape of public services.
They are argued to be more efficient than bureaucracy but have higher failure rates because of their legal and managerial autonomy. Unincorporated area German town law Municipal incorporationA Brief Summary of Municipal Incorporation Procedures by State - University of Georgia Characteristics and State Requirements for Incorporated Places - United States CensusMunicipal disincorporation / dissolutionDissolving Cities - University of California, Berkeley Municipal Disincorporation in California - California City Finance
