Despite what people may think, the rural population in Alberta is growing.  Patricia Macklin, Project Coordinator with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development says people often think the rural population is shrinking, when it actually grew by 4.1% from 2006 to 2011.  The rural population made up 19.4% of Alberta's entire population.  "Both areas are getting bigger, the cities are just getting bigger faster," she says.  

However, Macklin says there is a strong economic linkage between the growth of rural areas and cities. "If you think about rural areas close to cities, it means people can live in the country and commute, so that's how it's measured, 30% or more of the population is commuting into a city."

In comparison to other provinces, Macklin says Alberta is doing exceptionally well. "Manitoba had slightly higher growth, so we're second out of all the provinces," she explains.  "The prairies had the very strongest growth."  Alberta has a larger percentage of rural residents than Canada as a whole, and Alberta’s rural population grew faster than the rural Canadian average.  "We have a really strong economy, so my suspicion is people are moving from other provinces to Alberta for our economic growth.  We have a good oil industry and a good agriculture industry. We are doing well."  

Macklin says it's interesting to look at the data by economic region as well because all of Alberta's economic regions grew substantially, especially For McMurray.  "If you compare it to one of the biggest urban regions in Canada, like Montreal, they only grew by 1.7% where as the slowest growing region in Alberta grew by 4.2%"