IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mfg/wpaper/74.html

Power and Purpose: The Quiet Evolution of Canadian Municipal Law

Author

Listed:
  • Zack Taylor
  • Craig Mutter
  • Joseph Lyons
  • Alec Dobson

    (University of Toronto)

Abstract

Local government is a vital part of Canada’s multi-level democracy. It provides a voice for the needs, desires, and aspirations of local communities and shapes the environments in which we live. Amidst growing calls for greater local autonomy and expanded local powers and resources, this paper contributes a comparative overview of municipal law in Canada’s ten provinces and three territories. We find that Canadian municipal law has experienced a quiet evolution over the past 40 years. The scope of municipal legal authority has expanded considerably as provinces and territories have revised their general municipal acts and adopted special laws for major cities. While the overall trend has been toward more permissive authority and the recognition of municipalities as democratic, accountable, and responsible governments, there are significant variations, both in law and in practice, among and within provinces and territories. We conclude that the practical potential of this wave of legislative reform is not fully known and may be unrealized, and requires further research.

Suggested Citation

  • Zack Taylor & Craig Mutter & Joseph Lyons & Alec Dobson, 2026. "Power and Purpose: The Quiet Evolution of Canadian Municipal Law," IMFG Papers 74, University of Toronto, Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance.
    • Handle: RePEc:mfg:wpaper:74
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://utoronto.scholaris.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/7f06b98e-22b8-46ee-a9df-63d01af494a1/content
    File Function: First version, 2026
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • H70 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - General
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism
    • K11 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Property Law
    • K15 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Civil Law; Common Law

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mfg:wpaper:74. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Enid Slack (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfutca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.