Reviewing Census Metropolitan Areas (CMA) and Census Agglomerations (CA) in Canada According to Metropolitan Functionality

The goal of this working paper is to assess how well Canada's current method of delineating Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs) and Census Agglomerations (CAs) reflects the metropolitan nature of these geographic areas according to the facilities and services they provide. The effectiveness of Canada's delineation methodology can be evaluated by applying a functional model to Statistics Canada's CMAs and CAs.

As a consequence of the research undertaken for this working paper, Statistics Canada has proposed lowering the urban core population threshold it uses to define CMAs: a CA will be promoted to a CMA if it has a total population of at least 100,000, of which 50,000 or more live in the urban core. User consultation on this proposal took place in the fall of 2002 as part of the 2006 Census content determination process.