[1] The boundaries of a populated place are not necessarily contiguous with municipal boundaries; a population centre may both include areas outside the boundaries of a municipality, if their urban development is directly contiguous, and may exclude areas inside the boundaries of a municipality which are less densely populated.
A municipality may also not be classified as a population centre at all, but may simply be part of another municipality's population centre.
The term was first introduced in the Canada 2011 Census; prior to that, Statistics Canada used the term urban area.
[1] In the 2021 Census of Population, Statistics Canada listed 273 population centres in the province of Quebec.
[2] Parts of two other population centres are adjacent to the provincial boundary with Ontario – the Gatineau portion of Ottawa-Gatineau[3] and the Grenville portion Hawkesbury.