Late Sunday night, ATB’s chief economist Mark Parsons was watching his phone screen, waiting for a Statistics Canada computer model to predict that the province had its fifth millionth resident.
At 11:18 p.m., Canada’s population clock estimated that an immigrant arrived in Alberta, nudging the population to that new landmark number.
It’s a provincial milestone, Parsons said.
“If you’re in Alberta, you see it every day,” he said. “You see licence plates from other provinces, the schools are filling up, [the] streets are busy.”
The years 2023 and 2024 saw exceptional population growth in Alberta. The number of people in Alberta grew by 3.9 per cent in 2023, then another 4.4 per cent in 2024, according to provincial budget documents.
On Monday, Finance Minister Nate Horner told reporters that his ministry expected population growth to slow down a bit this year, to 2.6 per cent, and anticipated five million Albertans by July, not May.
“Which makes me wonder if we still aren’t growing faster than expected,” Horner said.
But there’s a big caveat on that number, says Stacey Hallman, an analyst in Statistics Canada’s centre for demography in Ottawa. The population clock is a computer model that uses past trends to predict future numbers.
The federal agency won’t finalize its second-quarter 2025 population estimates until September. Albertans will have to wait about five months to be five million official.
A report released earlier this year by StatsCan that looked at a range of population growth scenarios predicted Alberta reaching five million people sometime in 2026 or 2027.
Hallman said changes to federal limits on immigration, temporary foreign workers and international students will dampen the rate of newcomers to the country, and Alberta.
The bulk of Canada’s population growth is due to immigration, with the country’s slowing fertility rate of 1.3 children born per woman, she said.
Unlike previous bursts of Prairie population growth, the latest influx isn’t tethered to an oil boom, Parsons said. He said Alberta saw an inflow of young adults and young families hoping for good jobs and housing far more affordable than in British Columbia or Ontario.
Despite the federal immigration policy changes, inter-provincial migration to Alberta remains swift, Parsons said.
For those arriving with jobs, they’re working in petrochemicals, biodiesel, food manufacturing, tourism, and other growing sectors, he said.
Alberta’s birth rate exceeds its death rate, and most of the new arrivals are settling in the province’s four largest cities – Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, and Lethbridge.
Parsons said the province may remain an attractive destination for economic migrants as Ontario and Quebec are potentially more exposed to tariff policies.
Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction Minister Dale Nally said that growth in private sector jobs has been a draw.
“Our plan is working, but we agree, it’s also creating pressure on infrastructure and services and it’s something that we have to deal with,” he told reporters at the legislature on Monday.
NDP finance critic Court Ellingson says overcrowded classrooms, hospitals under strain and sometimes lengthy wait times for provincial services show the government was not prepared for rapid growth.
“We need new ideas and new people coming into this province to keep helping us move forward,” Ellingson said. “But we better be prepared to invest in the infrastructure for all of us to be successful.”
Ellingson said a push from some factions to hold a provincial referendum on separation from Canada could also make Alberta less attractive to newcomers.
