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 fillin…