- For the Estonian term, see Rural municipality (Estonia) and for Finland, maalaiskunta.
A
rural municipality, often abbreviated
RM, is a form of
municipality in the
Canadian provinces of
Manitoba and
Saskatchewan, perhaps best comparable to
counties or
townships in the western
United States. Unlike most counties in the United States or Canada, rural municipalities specifically exclude designated official cities, towns, villages, and
First Nations Indian reserves from their territory. They are essentially the rural portion of what would normally be a county. In this way, they could perhaps best be compared to certain counties in the state of
Virginia that have
independent cities excluded from their territory, although, in Virginia there is usually only one independent city per county, whereas there can be many officially excluded communities in the geographical territory of rural municipalities.