Municipalité régionale de comté

The term regional county municipality or RCM (French: municipalité régionale de comté, MRC) is used in Quebec to refer to one of 87 county-like political entities. In some older English translations they were called county regional municipality.

Regional county municipalities are a supralocal type of regional municipality, and act as the local municipality in unorganized territories within their borders. The system of regional county municipalities was introduced beginning in 1979 to replace the historic counties of Quebec. In most cases, the territory of an RCM corresponds to that of a census division, however there are a few exceptions.

Some local municipalities are outside any regional county municipality (hors MRC). This includes some municipalities within urban agglomerations and also some aboriginal lands, such as Indian reserves that are enclaves within the territory of an RCM but not juridically part of it. Where complete territorial coverage is desired, for example for the census, the Indian reserve enclaves are added in to create "geographical RCMs", and the urban agglomerations are considered to be "territories equivalent to an RCM".

For a list of RCMs and equivalent territories, see List of regional county municipalities and equivalent territories in Quebec.

The council of a RCM is composed of the mayors of the member municipalities as well as a prefect.

The prefect is usually elected by and from the council by secret ballot. Universal suffrage may also be used. The prefect's mandate is 2 years when elected by council or 4 years when elected by universal suffrage.

A MRC must:

RCMs, in their definition as political units, do not cover the entire territory of Quebec. The local municipalities of Quebec (and equivalent Aboriginal territories) not belonging to an RCM fall into the following categories:

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