All aboard Danielle Smith's bullet train to never-ending Alberta super-growth
CBC
Better make room for more neighbours, Albertans. So many more.
If the premier has it right, the province's population is on track to more than double in the time it will take my three-year-old to turn 30.
And in this mid-century, 10-million-person future of Smith's telling, you can take trains from Banff to Calgary and then at high-speed onto Edmonton; we'll still get most of our power from natural gas yet also reach net-zero emissions, as the "greenest energy producer in the world"; our taxes will be remain rock bottom and our public services will be world class.
This sketch of Tomorrowland, Alta., comes in this week's provincial throne speech.
By design, these speeches offer an outlook through rose-coloured glasses — every province is world class and "the very best Canada has to offer" according to its respective throne speech — but the one Smith's speechwriters gave Lt.-Gov. Salma Lakhani to read is something more.
Extra-sparkly-rosy? Well, to try another metaphor, it's certainly bullish in asserting the province's population will outstrip British Columbia and Québec by 2050.
To be sure, Alberta's currently growing at a current clip not seen since 1981, having grown by a staggering 184,400 in the last year to hit 4.7 million.
The throne speech, however, projects that pace to continue unabated.
"As we surpass five million people in the coming 24 months, Alberta's government must set priorities and guide its work through the lens of understanding that by 2050, our province is projected to be the second largest in the country with a population approaching 10 million people," the speech states.
It's not clear where this growth estimate came from, because the premier's office didn't respond to a query Monday.
It could be that somebody just added 184,400 to Alberta's population every year through 2050. It's certainly not the government's own forecasts, which back in July projected Alberta to have 7.1 million people by 2051 — or 8.6 million in its "high" scenario.
Nor is it clear how it's posited that the province will surpass British Columbia, a province that is currently 17 per cent more populous, or Québec and its 8.9 million current residents, according to the latest Statistics Canada estimate. That agency doesn't think Alberta's outgrowing either province in its forecast, while Québec projects it will also nearly hit 10 million by 2050, with a lot less growing needed for it to get there.
But according to this legislature-opening address, this new reality of boundless ultra-growth is the reality Smith believes her government should plan toward.
It's within that frame of mind that Smith referred to not one but two oft-discussed rail projects: a train from Banff to Calgary's downtown and airport, and that perennial dream of a high-speed link between Alberta's two biggest cities.
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