Local service district (New Brunswick)

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A local service district (LSD) was a provincial administrative unit for the provision of local services in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. LSDs originally covered areas of the province that maintained some services but were not made municipalities when the province's former county municipalities were dissolved at the start of 1967; eventually all of rural New Brunswick^[a] was covered by the LSD system. They were defined in law by the Local Service Districts Regulation of the Municipalities Act.^[1] In 2017, the Municipalities Act was replaced by the Local Governance Act,^[2] which continued the Local Service Districts Regulation.

LSDs were operated by provincial staff. Residents had the opportunity to form committees to serve in an advisory capacity to provincial staff.

As management units collectively referred to as unincorporated areas, application of the LSD concept evolved to fit changes in communities over time, and they defined their communities to varying degrees. For example, sub-units of the LSD made it possible to have separate taxing authorities within an LSD where one area may have grown to have greater needs; a LSD covering a civil parish after the incorporation of a village or establishment of other LSDs may not have defined a community very well.

Provincial government guidelines required capitalising the words local service district only if they follow the specific part of the name: e.g. Flatlands Local Service District but the local service district of Flatlands.^[3]

A 2021 white paper recommended major reforms to New Brunswick's local governance system, including abolition of LSDs on 1 January 2023.^[4] Areas serviced by LSDs became parts of municipalities or, especially in sparsely populated areas, rural districts.^[5]

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