Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: How large is Alberta, Canada?
Alberta (/ælˈbɜːrtə/(listen)) is a western province of Canada. With an estimated population of 4,067,175 as of 2016 census,[1] it is Canada's fourth most populous province and the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces. Its area is about 660,000 square kilometres (250,000sqmi). Alberta and its neighbour Saskatchewan were districts of the Northwest Territories until they were established as provinces on September 1, 1905.[5] The premier has been Rachel Notley since May 2015.
The Canadian Prairies are part of a vast sedimentary plain covering much of Alberta, southern Saskatchewan, and southwestern Manitoba. The prairies form a significant portion of the land area of Western Canada. The plains generally describes the expanses of largely flat, arable agricultural land which sustain extensive grain farming operations in the southern part of the provinces. Despite this, some areas such as the Cypress Hills and Alberta Badlands are quite hilly and the prairie provinces contain large areas of forest such as the Mid-Continental Canadian forests.
The diversity of Alberta’s electricity supply has increased substantially in recent years. To a large extent because of deregulation, the province has more technology, fuels, locations, ownership, and maintenance diversity than in the past and the rest of Canada. The system’s reliability, its cost structure and Alberta’s collective exposure to risk are now met by a complex system based on diverse power sources. However, overloaded power lines between northern Alberta and the south of the province are wasting enough electricity to power half the city of Red Deer, Alberta.
South Health Campus (SHC) is a large hospital in Calgary, in Alberta, Canada. It is administered by Alberta Health Services.
Provincial governments and Ministries of Education across Canada are also getting on board with student engagement and student voice. Alberta Education launched Speak Out – the Alberta Student Engagement Initiative in November 2008 and thousands of students have been sharing their ideas on how to improve how education looks and feels for them.
In principle there is a mathematical basis for the Alberta Township System (ATS) variant of the Dominion Land Survey (DLS) system as implemented in Canada. The implementation in western Canada reflects a number of slightly different approaches, as well as a large number of errors.
Alberta also has a dress tartan used for formal attire or special events. It contains the same colours as the Alberta tartan with large sections of white.
Alberta's Municipal Government Act (MGA) is the enabling legislation that allows its municipalities to conduct their own censuses. The MGA also stipulates that the Minister of Alberta Municipal Affairs (AMA) may regulate how municipal populations are determined and how they are conducted. The regulation that stipulates these is the MGA's Determination of Population Regulation (DOPR).
The governments of Alberta and Canada authorized hundreds of projects or developments representing thousands of individual authorizations related to "oil and gas, forestry, mining and other activities" on Beaver Lake Cree Nation core lands, covering a large portion of northeast Alberta and falling outside the boundaries of any Aboriginal reserve including within its territory, the Cold Lake Weapons Range. The Beaver Lake Cree Nation are contesting the "cumulative effect" of these projects and developments on "core traditional territory". On 14 May 2008 the Beaver Lake Cree Nation (BLCN) issued a Statement of Claim against the governments of Alberta and Canada, claiming that "in failing to manage the overall "cumulative environmental effects" of development on core Traditional Territory", Alberta and Canada have "breached the solemn commitment" in the 9 September 1876 Treaty 6, that the BLCN could "hunt, fish and trap in perpetuity". On 30 April 2013, in Lameman v Alberta, the Court of Appeal of Alberta dismissed Alberta and Canada’s appeal of Honourable Madam Justice B.A. Browne's "historic, precedent-setting judgement, "in their entirety", issued in March 2012.
Throughout the year, events were held across Canada to mark the jubilee, such as the Jubilee Levée held by Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Lois Hole, which was attended by more than 4,000 Albertans and at which Hole stated: "what we want to realize is how important the monarchy is to Canada and certainly to Alberta."
This is a list of protected areas of Alberta. Protected areas are managed by the Government of Canada or the Government of Alberta. The provincial government owns 60% of Alberta's landmass but most of this has not been formally protected. The total protected area throughout Alberta including federal and provincial protected areas is approximately .
Five of Canada's 13 UNESCO World Heritage Sites are entirely or partially located in Alberta: Five National Parks of Canada (Banff, Elk Island, Jasper, Waterton Lakes and Wood Buffalo), managed by Parks Canada are located in the province. Several former national parks (such Buffalo National Park, Wawaskesy National Park, and Nemiskam National Park) formerly existed in Alberta, but were delisted in 1947.
With the exception of Métis settlements, Statistics Canada recognizes all of Alberta's municipalities as census subdivisions and groups them into 19 census divisions based on geography. Within census divisions, Statistics Canada groups some of Alberta's municipalities/census subdivisions into two census metropolitan areas (CMAs) or 12 census agglomerations (CAs) for enumeration purposes. All CMAs include large urban centres and surrounding census subdivisions. All CAs also include large urban centres and in some cases their surrounding census subdivisions.
Alberta was established as provinces on September 1, 1905. Alberta separatism arises from the belief of many Albertans that they are culturally and economically distinct from the rest of Canada particularly, Central Canada and Eastern Canada and because of economic imbalances whereby Alberta is a net over-contributor to the system of Equalization payments in Canada. Furthermore, the majority of Alberta's trade flows north/south with the United States and not east/west with the rest of Canada.
Alberta has experienced a relatively high rate of growth in recent years, due in large part to its economy. Between 2003 and 2004, the province saw high birthrates (on par with some larger provinces such as British Columbia), relatively high immigration, and a high rate of interprovincial migration when compared to other provinces. Approximately 81% of the population live in urban areas and only about 19% live in rural areas. The Calgary–Edmonton Corridor is the most urbanized area in Alberta and is one of Canada's four most urban regions. Many of Alberta's cities and towns have also experienced high rates of growth in recent history. From a population of 73,022 in 1901, Alberta has grown to 3,645,257 in 2011 and in the process has gone from less than 1.5% of Canada's population to 10.9%. As of July 1, 2018, Alberta's population represented 11.6% of Canada's total population of 37,058,856 making it the fourth most populated province in Canada. According to the 2018 third quarter report, Alberta's population increased by 23,096 to 4,330,206, the largest increase since the 2014 economic downturn.
The party's popularity declined after the Progressive Conservative Party, led by Brian Mulroney won a majority government, defeating Prime Minister John Turner in the 1984 federal election. Under Mulroney, the NEP was rapidly dismantled and as a Conservative, new hope reigned for Alberta in achieving a better negotiated resource wealth distribution. This caused the Alberta separatist movement to dissipate significantly. Yet, despite this sentiment, the Mulroney government was a disappointment since the majority of MPs were elected from central Canada, and Alberta's concerns largely ignored. By the time he left office in 1993, Mulroney was perhaps the most hated Prime Minister due to various allegations of corruption pertaining to the sale of Canadian assets. Mulroney awarded the contract for maintenance of CF-18 fighter jets to the Montreal-based Bombardier Aerospace company, a decision that engendered so much anger in Western Canada, since Western Canada produced a better bid, that it directly led to the formation of the Reform Party of Alberta.
What is today the province of Alberta, Canada, has a history and prehistory stretching back thousands of years. Recorded or written history begins with the arrival of Europeans. The rich soil was ideal for growing wheat, and the coming of the railroads in the late 19th century led a to large-scale migration of farmers from Eastern Canada, the United States, and Europe. Wheat remains important, but the farms are much larger and the rural population much smaller. Alberta has urbanized and its economic base has expanded from the export of wheat but the export of oil as well.
In 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada decided in the Vriend v. Alberta case that section 15 of the Canadian Charter, as interpreted in Egan v. Canada, required that the Alberta human rights law be read and applied as if the words "sexual orientation" were included. Glen Murray was elected Mayor of Winnipeg becoming the first openly gay mayor of a large North American city. The Prince Edward Island Human Rights Act was amended to include sexual orientation.
Beaver River is a large river in east-central Alberta and central Saskatchewan, Canada. It flows east through Alberta and Saskatchewan and then turns sharply north to flow into Lac Île-à-la-Crosse on the Churchill River which flows into Hudson Bay. The Alberta part is in the Cold Lake oil sands.
Moose Lake is a relatively small lake in North-eastern Alberta, Canada, which drains north into the Beaver River (Canada). It is located just a few kilometres west of the town of Bonnyville. 
It is unclear whether the name (translated from the ) was given because of the large moose population of the area or because the shape of the lake resembles a moose's head - Franchere Bay and Vezeau Bay being the antlers, Bonnyville Beach the chin, and Island Bay the nose (complete with a large island for a nostril).
Sylvan Lake is a large lake in central Alberta, Canada. The resort town of Sylvan Lake is established on the shores of the lake, west of the city of Red Deer.
In power, the Progressive Conservatives fought a long battle with the federal government over control of Alberta's natural resources (particularly oil). The oil industry provided the Alberta government with large revenue surpluses that allowed it to maintain Alberta as the only province or territory in Canada without a provincial retail sales tax. Alberta experienced a large development boom, particularly in Calgary, in the 1970s and 1980s.
There once were four oil refineries in the Vancouver area, but Imperial Oil, Shell Canada, and Petro Canada converted their refineries to product terminals in the 1990s and now supply the BC market from their large refineries near Edmonton, Alberta, which are closer to Canada's oil sands and largest oil fields. Chevron's refinery is at risk of closure due to difficulties in getting oil supply from Alberta via the capacity-limited Trans Mountain Pipeline, its only pipeline link to the rest of Canada.
John Edward Brownlee served as Attorney-General of the province of Alberta in western Canada from 1921 until 1926, in the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) government of Herbert Greenfield. As Brownlee was the only lawyer in a caucus formed almost entirely of farmers, his role extended beyond the traditional expectations of an attorney-general, and ranged from providing legal advice to explaining how to write a business letter; he also became the government's de facto leader in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.
Cold Lake is a large lake in Central Alberta and Northern Saskatchewan, Canada. The lake straddles the Alberta/Saskatchewan border, and has a water area of . It is also one of the deepest lakes in Alberta with a maximum depth of . It has around 24 known species of fish in it and is a major ice fishing lake. It is also major stop for many migrating birds, and is home to one of the largest warbler populations in Alberta. A surface of lies in the province of Alberta.
Alberta: Amisk River (west,large), Sand River (Alberta) (north,large), Mooselake River (south), Manatokan Creek (north), Jackfish Creek (north), Marie Creek (north)