Geographic Units:

Part A – Plain Language Definition

Group of neighbouring municipalities joined together for the purposes of regional planning and managing common services (such as police or ambulance services). These groupings are established under laws in effect in certain provinces and territories of Canada. For example, a census division might correspond to a county, a regional municipality or a regional district. In other provinces and territories where laws do not provide for such areas, Statistics Canada defines equivalent areas for statistical reporting purposes in cooperation with these provinces and territories.

Part B – Detailed Definition

Census division (CD) is the general term for provincially legislated areas (such as county, municipalité régionale de comté and regional district) or their equivalents. Census divisions are intermediate geographic areas between the province level and the municipality (census subdivision).

Censuses: 2001, 1996, 1991, 1986, 1981, 1976, 1971, 1966, 1961

Remarks:

Census divisions have been established in provincial law to facilitate regional planning, as well as the provision of services that can be more effectively delivered on a scale larger than a municipality. In Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Yukon Territory, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, provincial/territorial law does not provide for these administrative geographic areas. Therefore, Statistics Canada, in cooperation with these provinces and territories, has created equivalent areas called census divisions for the purpose of disseminating statistical data. In the Yukon Territory, the census division is equivalent to the entire territory.

In New Brunswick, six municipalities (census subdivisions) straddle the legal county boundaries. In order to maintain the integrity of component municipalities, Statistics Canada modified the census division boundaries. Specifically, the following six municipalities straddle county boundaries; the county underlined indicates the CD in which these municipalities are completely located:

Next to provinces, census divisions are the most stable administrative geographic areas, and are therefore often used in longitudinal analysis.

Census Division Type

The type indicates the legal status of the census division according to official designations adopted by provincial authorities. The exception is the CD type "census division", which describes those units created as equivalents by Statistics Canada in cooperation with the provinces.

Table 4 shows CD types, their abbreviated forms, and their distribution by province and territory.

Table 4. Census Division Types by Province and Territory, 2001 Census

As of March 12, 2002

Census Division Code

Each census division is assigned a two-digit code that is not unique to each of the provinces and territories, and is based on the Standard Geographical Classification (SGC). In order to identify each CD uniquely in Canada, the two-digit province/territory code must precede the two-digit census division (CD) code. For example:

Changes to Census Divisions for the 2001 Census

In Ontario, as a result of the amalgamation of municipalities (census subdivisions), there are six cases where the census division (CD) is now composed of only one census subdivision (CSD), and one case where a CD is composed of only two CSDs. For these seven cases, the CD type and CD names are changed (Table 5). Also in Ontario, the CD type "Metropolitan Municipality (MM)" is discontinued.

Table 5. Changes to Census Division (CD) Types in Ontario, 1996 to 2001

In Quebec, several municipalités régionales de comté (MRCs) were affected by boundary changes:

In Ontario, two counties were affected by boundary changes:

In the Northwest Territories, the CSD of Holman, HAM (61 08 095) was taken from Kitikmeot Region (61 08) and annexed to Inuvik Region (61 07).

When Nunavut came into being on April 1, 1999, three census divisions (and the 31 census subdivisions within them) were taken from the Northwest Territories and assigned to Nunavut. This change did not affect the boundaries or codes of the census divisions and census subdivisions; however, the province code changed from 61 to 62:

The boundaries, names and codes of CDs reflect those in effect on January 1, 2001, the geographic reference date for the 2001 Census of Canada. Information about any CD changes that were effective on or before the January 1, 2001 reference date must have been received by Statistics Canada prior to March 1, 2001, in order to be processed in time for the census.

Refer to the related definitions of Census Subdivision (CSD) and Standard Geographical Classification (SGC).

Changes Prior to the 2001 Census:

Between 1991 and 1996, there were a number of significant changes to the boundaries of census divisions:

In 1991, the number of census divisions in Quebec increased from 76 to 99 as a result of the implementation of the municipalités régionales de comté (MRC) or their equivalent, e.g. communautés urbaines, territoire conventionné. This represented a completely new census division structure. In order to accommodate MRCs within the two-digit census division code of the Standard Geographical Classification, the province agreed to groupings of MRCs or their equivalents in order to confine the total number of units to 99. These MRC groupings (called census divisions) were: