[someone123]

Yes, this compares the Halifax Regional Municipality to the City of Atlanta for example, which has about 500,000 people and is only 10% or less of the metro.

Next census the Halifax CMA will apparently grow a bit beyond the bounds of HRM with the addition of East Hants, where about half of workers are commuters. The true commutershed extends a bit into Hants, Kings, and Lunenburg counties while the HRM extends beyond the commutershed on the Eastern Shore side (which is very sparsely populated; the eastern 2/3 of the HRM land area gets 1 council seat). The Halifax CMA may hit 500,000 in only a few years.

There's something to be said for municipality size and tax base. In the case of Halifax the municipality and tax base are now larger than some fairly large American cities such as Cleveland or Buffalo. But the city council doesn't tend to be very ambitious.