Specialized municipalities of Alberta

A specialized municipality is a type of municipal status used in the Canadian Province of Alberta. Alberta's specialized municipalities are unique local governments formed without the creation of special legislation. They typically allow for the coexistence of urban and rural areas within the jurisdiction of a single municipal government.

Specialized municipalities may be formed under the authority of Section 83 of the Municipal Government Act (MGA) under one of three of the following scenarios:

Applications for specialized municipality status are approved via orders in council made by the Lieutenant Governor in Council under recommendation from the Minister of AMA.

Alberta has five specialized municipalities that had a cumulative population of 178,598 and an average population of 35,720 in the 2011 Census. Alberta's largest and smallest specialized municipalities are the Strathcona County and the Municipality of Jasper with populations of 92,490 and 4,051 respectively.

44 elected officials (four mayors, one reeve and 39 councillors) provide specialized municipality governance throughout the province.

An order in council to incorporate any municipality must give the municipality an official name. Of Alberta's five specialized municipalities, two of them have branded themselves simply as municipalities in their official names, while two others have branded themselves as counties. The remaining specialized municipality has branded itself as a regional municipality.

The use of the regional municipality term in the official name of the one specialized municipality has led to a common belief that a regional municipality is its own separate municipal status type in Alberta, which is not the case. Meanwhile, the use of the county term in the official names of two specialized municipalities and 46 municipal districts has partially led to a common belief that a county also is its own separate municipal status type, which also is not the case. The other major contributor to this common belief is that a county was a former municipal status type in Alberta prior to the County Act being repealed in 1995.

An update to the MGA in 1994 legislated the ability to incorporate a specialized municipality "when no other classification of municipal government can meet the needs of residents of the proposed municipality." The incorporation of five specialized municipalities followed starting with the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo in 1995, Strathcona County in 1996, Mackenzie County in 1999, the Municipality of Jasper in 2001, and the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass in 2008.

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