This data visualization product provides information on the pace of population renewal in Canada. The web page shows a real-time model of population growth in Canada. The components of population growth are modelled in order to adjust the population of the country, provinces and territories...
www150.statcan.gc.ca
Alberta hits 5 million according to population clock! Is it just me or does it seem like even though our population growth exceeds BC's we never seem to make any headway catching up to them?
Part of the reason is BC (and most provinces) are still growing relatively rapidly - periodically Alberta grows faster for a while, but a sustaining a meaningful higher growth rate in Alberta hasn't really happened short of a few years every decade during a boom. BC's larger base population, means a lower growth rate is still a lot of people. It's slow to catch up in that context.
Meanwhile most places have declining population growth rates over time, Alberta's too. The aging baby boom pushes up death rates and the continued slump in births has flipped most provinces to negligible/negative natural growth with the majority coming from immigration. As we have seen more recently, immigration policies are under significant scrutiny and shifting perspectives, so outlook is pretty fuzzy on what that it will all mean. But given those trends, the overall growth rate is likely to be lower everywhere in the future.
Also a factor is all provinces are connected via broadly shared macro-economic and immigration trends. It's very difficult for one province to maintain a substantially higher/lower growth rate than the others over an extended period of time to the point where they drop or go up a rank at this point. For example, to close the ~700,000 person gap between AB and BC, if AB grew an average of 1.5% annually, and BC grew only by 1%, we'd only be approaching parity in about 30 years. Sustaining a 50% higher growth rate on average may be possible, but hardly is a certainty over such a long time frame.
As a result, I think there is very little possibility that the rank of the big provinces by population will change anytime soon. We might catch BC one day, but may also not happen in our lifetimes.
Over longer time frames like 100 years? Sure, many things can happen that are cannot be predicted. Alberta may continue to grow more rapidly, or may stagnate and decline. Many places were very sure they would sustain 3 - 5% annual growth rates forever during the height of the baby boom ... only to have their rate of growth collapse in few years as birth rates rapidly declined. Hard to predict the really long term with much certainty.
