City council supervision of municipalities in the Iranian and ‎Canadian legal systems

In countries that enjoy local decentralization, city councils are elected by the people as a local body to expedite social, economic, developmental, health, cultural, educational and other welfare programs. The municipality of each city is the executive arm of these councils. In fact, the municipality implements the policies and decisions of the city council. However, there is always the concern that the municipality to be unable or unwilling to implement these policies. Therefore, the supervision of the city council over the mayor and the municipality is an important and fundamental issue and this study tries to answer this question: How does the city council supervise the municipality and what are the similarities and differences between the city council's supervision of municipalities in Iran and Canada? In response to this question, using descriptive and comparative method, it was concluded that although the government system of the two countries are fundamentally different; the former is a unitary states and the latter is a federal state, but in both countries the mayor is appointed as an executive director by the city council. Therefore, the city council monitors the proper performance of the municipality; a priori, during execution and posteriori. by appointing the mayor, setting policies and programs, appointing municipal officials, approving the budget and municipal transactions, monitoring revenue and expenditure accounts, supervising public services, settling of the budget.