 As such, Alberta Municipal Affairs provides municipal districts with the opportunity to brand themselves either as "municipal districts" or "counties" in their official names.A "county" in Alberta used to be a type of designation in a single-tier municipal system; but this was changed to "municipal district" under the "Municipal Government Act", when the "County Act" was repealed in the mid-1990s, at which time they were also permitted to retain the usage of "county" in their official names.Statistics Canada also refers to Nova Scotia's 12 district municipalities as municipal districts for census subdivision purposes.