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A township is a sub-type of municipalities in the Canadian province of Ontario. A township can have the municipal status of either a single-tier or lower-tier municipality.
Ontario has 200 townships that had a cumulative population of 990,396 and an average population of 4,952 in the 2011 Census. Ontario's largest and smallest townships are Centre Wellington and Cockburn Island with populations of 26,693 and 0 respectively.
History
Under the former Municipal Act, 1990, a township was a type of local municipality. Under this former legislation, a locality with a population of 1,000 or more could have been incorporated as a township by Ontario's Municipal Board upon review of an application from 75 or more residents of the locality. It also provided that a township could include "a union of townships and a municipality composed of two or more townships".
In the transition to the Municipal Act, 2001, these requirements were abandoned and, as at December 31, 2002, every township that:
The current legislation also provides lower and single-tier municipalities with the authority to name themselves as "townships", or other former municipal status types such as "cities", "towns" or "villages", or generically as "municipalities".