Who will be Alberta's largest metro in a decade?

[CBBarnett]

I actually wouldn't be surprised if a place like Medicine Hat became more popular in the future.

It's climate is arguably the best in the Praries and somewhat underrated within Canada.

I am curious about the future of Medicine Hat. It's climate is good but it's a really remote place. It hasn't seen much beyond modest, incremental growth in an otherwise boom/bust province. Med Hat has about 65,000 people today. This compares to Lethbridge CMA at ~125,000 today.

Demographically it seems to share a lot of similarities with smaller towns and more remote Sask. farming cities - slow, modest or zero growth. It doesn't appear to follow the same trends as Calgary - Edmonton and even Lethbridge, that have more sustained, higher population growth. A couple of speculations:

• Medicine Hat is much farther away than Lethbridge from Calgary, nearly 3 hour drive v. ~2 hours.
• It's also a remarkably empty rural area all around with Suffield, the Palliser Triangle lands and no notable towns or cities beyond it. Swift Current, Sask. is the next notable town (only ~20,000 people, 225km east). You would have to go all the way to Regina to hit the next city bigger than Medicine Hat (~450km east).
• Medicine Hat seems more agriculturally dominated than some of the others large towns in Alberta, that's a slow industry with limited growth. That greenhouse economy is interesting as a few clusters have formed around Medicine Hat and Redcliff.
• Are there any major provincial institutions in Medicine Hat? University of Lethbridge is likely the most significant post-secondary outside of the big cities by a wide margin which helps balance Lethbridge as a small but reasonably diverse economy with different jobs available.
• Solar and wind projects - Lethbridge caught some of the logistical spillover from the (now paused) boom in this industry. Anything in the Medicine Hat area?

Can things change and Medicine Hat becomes more attractive to growth? Sure - but I don't see the major drivers today to shake things up. Meanwhile Calgary metro is adding a Medicine Hat sized city every 18 months during boom times, every 3 - 5 years during busts.

 

[Urban Outdoorsman]

I moved to Lethbridge about 6 months ago, and TBH I expect it to increasingly become the 3rd major metro in AB. Of all the small cities in AB 70k-100k I really think Lethbridge has the most going for it. It's warmer than Calgary or Edmonton, housing in absurdly cheap in comparison and it's still only and hour from the mountains (which btw are way less crowded). It's got an up and coming downtown with lots of really nice history buildings and a comparable lack of surface parking lots. Obviously Lethbridge has its issues, but there's a lot of potential here. When the city starts creeping into the 200k range I think it'll really start taking off.

 

[Surrealplaces]

Medicine Hat is a nice little place but has one main detractor - its distance from other cities. If it was even an hour closer to Calgary things might be different, but as others have mentioned, it's kind of on its own not being close to anything. Lethbridge has always had the more convenient location being 2 hours from Calgary, an hour from the border, and an hour from the mountains. Medicine Hat does have the better climate though.

 

[Beltline_B]

Interesting stuff Beltline. I didn’t move here until 1998 and never knew much of the back history.
I’m curious to where the population numbers from past years come from? I couldn’t find much on Google except for this site and I don’t know if it’s accurate.

My numbers are from memory only, and from looking at some maps a few years back ~2010.
My uncle used to work for the Alberta government, and he had these huge maps in his garage that were like 6’ x 8’, etc..
He had various ones of Calgary and Edmonton which included the surrounding areas and I am certain was probably census, division, 11 and census division 6.
A couple were from 1971 and the population for Calgary if my memory serves me correctly was 411,000 and Edmonton was 508,000. Those numbers might be incorrect but at the time there was approximately 100,000 people difference between the two cities.
He had some other maps of Calgary and Edmonton with the same boundaries, and I believe they were from 1978 and the populations on the map were Calgary having 579,000 and Edmonton having 632,000.

 

[darwink]

Are there any major provincial institutions in Medicine Hat? University of Lethbridge is likely the most significant post-secondary outside of the big cities by a wide margin which helps balance Lethbridge as a small but reasonably diverse economy with different jobs available.

The local college. But yeah, there isn't an anchor institution of the scale ULethbridge is.

There really isn't an obvious comparative advantage for Medicine Hat except for sun hours and mean temperature. Its a regional service centre.

It is telling that their top asks from the province have been twinning the highway to lethbridge with the hope of attracting more agricultural processing, making the Wildhorse border crossing 24 hour, and building a bigger runway at the airport.

Any money for those would be better spent on expanding the college to bring programs which attract students from elsewhere, with the hope that some stay, increasing the growth rate and business formation rate.

 

[Mountain Man]

Medicine Hat was a big Natural Gas producer, but I think that has dwindled a bit. They are mostly agricultural now, and a cheap place for gas and groceries for people in SW Sask, but there isn't much else there. There are a ton of British soldiers in the summer there due to BATUS (British Army Training Unit Suffield) having several battlegroups rotate through for training, makes for an interesting night at the bars when they stop by lol. Suffield should be a bigger base for the Canadian Military than it is, curious if that will change with the world militarizing again. Environmental groups are all over Suffield though, it's one of the last large areas of native prairie grasslands left in the country. Last time I was there, I saw a herd of Pronghorn which was neat. My father was in the military, so we spent 3 years in the Suffield / Medicine Hat area. That was a long time ago now though.

Only cool thing in the area is the Cypress Hills, they are quite neat (feels like the Bragg Creek area a bit), if you have never been you should definitely go sometime.

 

[JWhite]

Some companies that were still based in Edmonton like AGT (now Telus) were moving most of the jobs to Calgary. AGT also bought out EdTel, and a lot of those jobs were gone due to redundancies or moved to Calgary.

The 90s was an interesting decade for AGT/Telus. My father worked at Telus and I remember some the things that were happening around that time.
AGT was always heavily-based and controlled out of Edmonton and for decades was a cash cow for Edmonton’s economy. Even though AGT received more revenue out of Calgary than they did from Edmonton the bulk of the jobs remained in Edmonton.
After Telus was privatized, everything changed, and jobs started moving to Calgary, and if they weren’t moving to Calgary they were being created in Calgary. Telus mobility, started up in Calgary, despite an internal political battle to have it based in Edmonton. The same for Telus advanced communications, which was ultimately based in Calgary. A number of new management was hired after the privatization. And most of the new managers were based in Calgary. Privatization seem to be the big catalyst for the shift to Calgary, and we have Don Getty to thank for that.

I don’t know the numbers of jobs in each city before or after privatization but my father had mentioned that when he first started at Telus, there were roughly 3 times as many jobs in Edmonton as Calgary and they treated Calgary like a pesky little brother, lol

By the time Telus merged with BC Tel in the late 90s when my father retired, Calgary had more employees than Edmonton did.
After the merger with BC Tel a number of jobs were lost in Alberta overall, but Edmonton was hit harder than Calgary. Telus made their focus on Vancouver and Calgary and kind of forgot about Edmonton.

 

[JWhite]

Lots of things involving my father in this thread ha ha. My parents currently live in Medicine Hat!
They moved down about 15 years ago and they like it a lot. Of course, they like the slower pace, and my father grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan so Medicine Hat’s lifestyle is the sweet spot for him.
I mostly agree with the comments about medicine hat, and that I don’t think it will grow very fast. It’ll keep growing with slow modest growth, but it is kind of far from other cities, and that hinders any really strong growth. At least that’s my opinion.
Regarding Cypress Hills, yes, anyone who gets a chance to go down and visit it. It’s a really nice little part of the province. It’s also one of the few places in Alberta where you can go camping on the May long weekend and it’s actually hot and dry.

 

[ByeByeBaby]

Here's one cut of data that might speak to prospects.
On a purely mercenary basis, I'd expect cities to have better prospects for growth if they had a more educated workforce (better suited to new jobs), if they attracted more immigrants (the main source of population growth), and if they had relatively fewer seniors (who will lead to population decline on the mid-term, ie 20-30 year horizon). Here's a bunch of cities that Medicine Hat can compare to:

The darker bars are people with bachelor's degrees or higher, the lighter bars are those without. The red bars are non-immigrants, the blue bars are immigrants who have been in Canada for 10 or more years, and the green bars are newer immigrants. Medicine Hat doesn't do well by any metric; it has lots of seniors (I suspect it's a bit of a regional farmer retirement centre), it has less educated workers, and it's not attracting immigrants.
The Saskatchewan centres seem to be attracting more new immigrants - relatively at least; the bigger cities as well as Lethbridge and Wood Buffalo have a more educated workforce. All the other Alberta centres are attracting more immigrants than Medicine Hat. Brooks of course has a huge immigrant population, but at lower education levels -- this is the slaughterhouse workforce primarily I think.

 

[Alex_YYC]

The 90s was an interesting decade for AGT/Telus. My father worked at Telus and I remember some the things that were happening around that time.
AGT was always heavily-based and controlled out of Edmonton and for decades was a cash cow for Edmonton’s economy. Even though AGT received more revenue out of Calgary than they did from Edmonton the bulk of the jobs remained in Edmonton.
After Telus was privatized, everything changed, and jobs started moving to Calgary, and if they weren’t moving to Calgary they were being created in Calgary. Telus mobility, started up in Calgary, despite an internal political battle to have it based in Edmonton. The same for Telus advanced communications, which was ultimately based in Calgary. A number of new management was hired after the privatization. And most of the new managers were based in Calgary. Privatization seem to be the big catalyst for the shift to Calgary, and we have Don Getty to thank for that.

I don’t know the numbers of jobs in each city before or after privatization but my father had mentioned that when he first started at Telus, there were roughly 3 times as many jobs in Edmonton as Calgary and they treated Calgary like a pesky little brother, lol

By the time Telus merged with BC Tel in the late 90s when my father retired, Calgary had more employees than Edmonton did.
After the merger with BC Tel a number of jobs were lost in Alberta overall, but Edmonton was hit harder than Calgary. Telus made their focus on Vancouver and Calgary and kind of forgot about Edmonton.

The general privatization happening during the 90’s wasn’t good for a government city like Edmonton. It might be the biggest factor in Calgary leapfrogging Edmonton.

 

[darwink]

BATUS is scaling back, austerity in the UK and all that.

The SE of the province is dry gas unfortunately, largely good for its heat value or methanol (there is a natural gas methanol plant in Medicine Hat). Being landlocked, it hasn't made sense to expand that plant. Renewable incentives, the Gulf Coast labour force, and much lower shipping costs instead meant the plant owners built a huge biomethanol plant in Texas.

 

[smart_development]

My prediction was more....lots of people within Canada are looking for affordable places to live and the overlap between affordable places and decent climates in Canada now is pretty narrow. Southern Alberta is sort of overlooked in that sense. It's possible that Medicine Hat doesn't grow much because most of the people in that category just pick Lethbridge but I also wouldn't be surprised if it did get get some traction.

Medicine Hat

Avg Annual Temp: 6.1C
Avg Annual Sunshine Hours: 2544
Avg Annual Snowfall: 88cm

Lethbridge

Avg Annual Temp: 5.9C
Avg Annual Sunshine Hours: 2507
Avg Annual Snowfall: 112cm

Winnipeg

Avg Annual Temp: 3C
Avg Annual Sunshine Hours: 2352
Avg Annual Snowfall: 112cm

Edmonton(Int'l Airport)

Avg Annual Temp: 2.6C
Avg Annual Sunshine Hours: 2310
Avg Annual Snowfall: 118cm

Ottawa

Avg Annual Temp: 6.4C
Avg Annual Sunshine Hours: 2131
Avg Annual Snowfall: 223cm

 

[trtcttc]

My prediction was more....lots of people within Canada are looking for affordable places to live and the overlap between affordable places and decent climates in Canada now is pretty narrow. Southern Alberta is sort of overlooked in that sense. It's possible that Medicine Hat doesn't grow much because most of the people in that category just pick Lethbridge but I also wouldn't be surprised if it did get get some traction.

There's just a lot more to it than that. People want restaurants, shops, stores, recreation facilities, entertainment, health care, friends and family network. Not saying Medicine Hat doesn't have any of these things but definitely not to the extent of a larger city like Calgary. I think most people squeezed by affordability, try to seek out lower cost alternatives that have few tradeoffs. That's probably what drew more people to Calgary and Halifax despite both not being the cheapest city in the area (Edmonton and St John/Charlottetown/other Atlantic Cities). Calgary has the city amenities, walkable areas, decent transit, jobs, and generally more urban than Edmonton. There may be some tradeoffs, notably weather with Vancouver and Toronto. People squeezed by affordability in Calgary, likewise, will first try to look at less desirable parts of the city, then maybe a bit out like Airdrie or Okotoks. Unless there is a gold rush of resources or a once in a century pandemic, for a bunch of people to suddenly relocate to Medicine Hat for the affordability and weather doesn't seem likely.

 

[CBBarnett]

I imagine someone has done a study on this before about "good weather attracts growth" - I know people always talk about the weather, and it's a big factor for vacation decisions, but is that actually a core driver of why people actually move/stay/leave a place? I'd assume for most people employment, family and access to services/amenities are the bigger factors, probably more so than even affordability - which is why some cities keep growing yet are wildly expensive.

Perhaps in wealthier, seniors in retirement demographics weather is a more important factor as they have the means to move and aren't looking for access to employment markets usually?

Not to say that some people don't move for the weather - people move for millions of reasons - just trying to think through how major of a factor it actual is.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

My prediction was more....lots of people within Canada are looking for affordable places to live and the overlap between affordable places and decent climates in Canada now is pretty narrow. Southern Alberta is sort of overlooked in that sense. It's possible that Medicine Hat doesn't grow much because most of the people in that category just pick Lethbridge but I also wouldn't be surprised if it did get get some traction.

Medicine Hat

Avg Annual Temp: 6.1C
Avg Annual Sunshine Hours: 2544
Avg Annual Snowfall: 88cm

Lethbridge

Avg Annual Temp: 5.9C
Avg Annual Sunshine Hours: 2507
Avg Annual Snowfall: 112cm

Winnipeg

Avg Annual Temp: 3C
Avg Annual Sunshine Hours: 2352
Avg Annual Snowfall: 112cm

Edmonton(Int'l Airport)

Avg Annual Temp: 2.6C
Avg Annual Sunshine Hours: 2310
Avg Annual Snowfall: 118cm

Ottawa

Avg Annual Temp: 6.4C
Avg Annual Sunshine Hours: 2131
Avg Annual Snowfall: 223cm

I'm just not sure that's a factor. It's nice, but when you are thinking about moving within Canada I'm not sure average annual temperature is in the top 10 factors.