On Sunday night, the chief economist of ATB, Mark Parsons, was watching the screen of his phone, waiting for a Statistics Canada computer model to predict that the province had its fifth millionth resident.
At 11:18 pm, Canada’s population clock estimated that an immigrant arrived in Alberta, pushing the population to that new reference number.
It is a provincial milestone, said Parsons.
“If you are in Alberta, you see it every day,” he said. “You will see plates from other provinces, schools are filling, [the] The streets are busy. “
The years 2023 and 2024 saw an exceptional population growth in Alberta. The number of people in Alberta grew 3.9 percent in 2023, then another 4.4 percent in 2024, according to provincial budgetary documents.
On Monday, the Minister of Finance, Nate Horner, told journalists that his ministry expected population growth to decrease a bit this year, to 2.6 percent, and anticipated five million shelters for July, not from May.
“What makes me wonder if we are not growing faster than expected,” said Horner.
But there is a great warning about that number, says Stacey Hallman, analyst at the Statistics Canada Demography Center in Ottawa. The population clock is a computer model that uses past trends to predict future numbers.
The Federal Agency does not end its population estimates of the second quarter of 2025 until September. Albertaos will have to wait about five months to be officers of five million.
TO Published report at the beginning of this year By Statscan that analyzed a variety of population growth scenarios predicted that Alberta reached five million people at some point in 2026 or 2027.
Hallman said that changes in federal limits on immigration, temporary foreign workers and international students will cushion the rate of newcomers to the country and Alberta.
Most of the population growth of Canada is due to immigration, with the country’s deceleration rate of 1.3 children born per woman, he said.
Alberta attractive during the tariff threat, says the economist
Unlike the previous explosions of the growth of the population of Praderas, the last influx is not tied to an oil boom, Parsons said. He said Alberta saw an entry of young adults and young families waiting for good jobs and homes much more affordable than in British or ontarium Columbia.
Despite federal changes in immigration policy, interprovincial migration to Alberta remains fast, Parsons said.
For those who arrive with jobs, they are working in petrochemicals, biodiesel, food manufacture, tourism and other growing sectors, he said.
Alberta’s birth rate exceeds its mortality rate, and most newcomers are being established in the four largest cities in the province: Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer and Lethbridge.
Parsons said the province can continue to be an attractive destination for economic migrants, since Ontario and Quebec are potentially more exposed to tariff policies.
The Alberta Service and the Minister of Reduction of the Bureaucracy Dale Nally said that the growth in private sector works has been a draw.
“Our plan is working, but we agree, it is also creating pressure on infrastructure and services and it is something that we have to deal with,” he told journalists from the legislature on Monday.
The Finance Critics Court of NDP, Ellingson, says that overcrowded classrooms, hospitals under tension and, sometimes, long waiting times for provincial services show that the government was not prepared for rapid growth.
“We need new ideas and new people who enter in this province to continue helping us,” Ellingson said. “But we better be prepared to invest in the infrastructure so that we are all successful.”
Ellingson said that an impulse of some factions to celebrate a provincial referendum on Canada’s separation could also make Alberta less attractive to newcomers.
