50,000 increase in the Alberta population in 50 days is 365,000 a year or 8% increase. This is not sustainable.
I'm trying to just picture where all these people are going. It's safe to assume the vast majority are ending up in the Edmonton and Calgary CMAs, with a handful going to Red Deer, Grande Prairie and Lethbridge, and the crumbs being spread around the rest of the province. Assume 40,000 of the 50,000 are going to Edmonton or Calgary, and for ease of argument, say 20,000 for each. So 20,000 in Edmonton's CMA in 50 days.
It's not unfathomable to house this many people this quickly but construction would have to ramp up significantly. I know there's a fair number of new suburbs being built, but it honestly seems slower than the 2007-2020 period. And when you look at a lot of these new neighbourhoods fully built out, the populations are often around 5,000-8,000 inhabitants. So we'd be needing to build multiple suburban neighbourhoods within 50 days to house this influx. Maybe my perception is off. There is infill, and of course Edmonton has abundant room within its footprint for far more people, it just doesn't seem like there's a lot. Downtown has Falcon and the Parks and Stationlands under construction, but not much else really. Augustana, the View, CNIB, Encore, etc. recently finished or are about to finish, but even if these towers hold 1,000 people, that's still not enough. There's of course, smaller scale infill, from small condo and apartment blocks to skinny homes, but again, not what I'd expect if the city was housing this many people in such a short span of time.
20,000 in 50 days extrapolated to 1 year is 146,000. Not unforeseen, but that's the same tier of growth that cities like Toronto and Dallas have been pulling in and I don't think we're building as much as either.