How many territories does Canada have?

Canada has three territories: Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. Together the territories cover 3,921,739 square kilometres (about 39.3 per cent of Canada's land area) but contain only about 130,000 people (about 0.3 per cent of Canada's population). Each territory has a Premier, a Legislative Assembly, a court system, and a Commissioner (the territorial counterpart of a provincial Lieutenant Governor) appointed by the federal government.

Yukon was created on June 13, 1898 from the Northwest Territories in response to the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896 to 1899. The territory covers 482,443 square kilometres in the northwest of mainland Canada, with about 45,000 residents (two-thirds in the capital Whitehorse). Yukon was the first jurisdiction in Canada to settle comprehensive Indigenous land claims, with 11 First Nations Final Agreements settled or in progress.

The Northwest Territories is the remainder of a much larger territory created in 1870 from the transfer of Rupert's Land. Successive territorial reductions created Manitoba (1870), British Columbia (added 1871), Yukon (1898), Alberta and Saskatchewan (1905), and Nunavut (1999). The current NWT covers 1,346,106 square kilometres with about 45,000 residents (more than half in Yellowknife). The territory is the centre of Canadian diamond mining (the Ekati, Diavik, and Gahcho Kue mines).

Nunavut was created on April 1, 1999 from the eastern Northwest Territories under the federal Nunavut Act of 1993. The territory covers 2,093,190 square kilometres (about 21 per cent of Canada) with about 41,000 residents (about 84 per cent Inuit, the only Canadian jurisdiction with an Indigenous-majority population). Nunavut's creation followed the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement of 1993 (the largest Indigenous land claim in Canadian history). Inuktitut is one of three official languages of Nunavut alongside English and French. Territories differ from provinces in that they are creations of federal statute and do not have constitutional status, though devolution agreements have given them nearly the full range of provincial-style powers in education, health, and natural resources.