The Canadian province of New Brunswick is divided by the Territorial Division Act into 152 geographic parishes, units which had political significance as subdivisions of counties until the Municipalities Act of 1966. Parishes still exist in law and include any municipality, rural community, or regional municipality within their borders. They provided convenient boundaries for electoral districts and organising delivery of government services for some time after 1966 but were gradually supplanted for such purposes by local service districts (LSDs), which better represent communities of interest. Local governance reforms on 1 January 2023 abolished the local service district as a unit of governance but this did not affect the existence of geographic parishes. Parishes are still used to describe legal boundaries for health administration judicial matters, agricultural boards, and some other entities; highway, fisheries and wildlife, community planning, and some other departments use parishes for rural locations, while some forms still use parishes as the only alternative to municipalities when entering one's community. Provincial government guidelines require capitalising the word parish only if it follows the specific part of the name: e.g., Hopewell Parish but the parish of Hopewell.

Other uses of the term parish

Confusion is caused by three other government uses of the term parish.

List

142 of New Brunswick's parishes are used as the basis of census subdivisions by Statistics Canada. Unless noted, all figures below are for census subdivisions, which do not include areas within municipalities, incorporated rural communities, or Indian reserves. Revised census figures based on the 2023 local governance reforms have not been released.

Former and renamed parishes