CALGARY — If it is true that people speak with their feet and the market follows its own winding and inexorable course, then there is definitely less popular demand in Canada for what Alberta has to supply these days.There are now more people leaving the land of the boom for other provinces than vice versa. The slowing that many here felt by observing the lengthening shelf life of real-estate for-sale signs and through conversations at the lumber yard or the paint store was confirmed last week by Statistics Canada. Alberta is no longer the prettiest girl in the class or, to put it more seriously, she may be losing her charm as a destination for labour capital.Yes, Alberta's population still increased in the fourth quarter of 2007 - by a quite robust 0.32 per cent thanks to births and the country's highest rates of international immigration, particularly from non-permanent residents. But over that final three months of 2007, more Canadians left Alberta than arrived here from every province except Ontario and Quebec. There are no more "buffalo" (local slang for short-term opportunities) left or the thrill of the hunt is gone. Either way, Newfoundlanders and Saskatchewanians, in particular, are going home.This confirms that a similar shift - Alberta's first since 1994 - noted in Statscan's 2007 third-quarter report is now a trend. Significantly, the details of the Statscan report note overall population growth was slower in the fourth quarter than the third and that Alberta is now the only jurisdiction in the West to be experiencing negative interprovincial migration. Meantime, more people are moving to Newfoundland and Labrador than leaving it for the first time since the early 1990s, and Alberta is the largest single source of those repatriations.The biggest draw now is Saskatchewan, a province in renaissance since April of 2006 when it hit a 25-year population low of 986,900. Back now above one million for the first time since 1986, Saskatchewan is likely to reach a historic high in 2008. At the end of 2007, its population was estimated at 1,006,600, thanks to fourth-quarter growth of 0.33 per cent - which, if it continues, means Canada's breadbasket will soon top its highest recorded population of 1,009,613.It is important to note that Alberta isn't exactly facing a mass exodus, and it would take volumes of pessimistic hyperbole to interpret this as some sort of "bust." Alberta's percentage of population growth is still almost identical to that taking place in Saskatchewan and, along with the other western provinces, Yukon and the Northwest Territories, its attractiveness remains well above the national average. The balance of Canada's political and economic power continues its shift away from the traditional centre.Certainly, there is no shortage of people who will argue that some slowing of the economic pace in Alberta is a welcome change - that it could lessen labour shortages, stall upward pressures on wages and housing costs, encourage greater social stability and enhance levels of civic engagement as the population becomes less transient. People will be able to catch their breath and think.Yet, change it is. People who purchased homes at the peak of the Calgary real-estate shortage of 2005-06 may begin to feel uncomfortable. Others who stretched their income to buy opulent homes and properties based on interest-only mortgages and stock options that are suddenly less optional than they were a couple of years ago will have to come to the realization that there were factors other than their own personal genius behind the rise of oil to $100 a barrel and beyond. As for labour, there's no certainty yet that demand for it has lessened. Given the state of drilling and other gas-related businesses, a lessening of demand wouldn't be surprising, but all we know for certain is that the supply of labour in Alberta from Canadian sources is becoming scarcer.Record levels of public spending may also need to be reviewed. After all, if Ralph Klein's government was taken to the woodshed for failing to anticipate what proved to be unprecedented levels of growth, this negative population trend hints at a situation even more challenging.The bloom may be off the wild rose, but the party's not over. There's a still a lot of giddy-up, just a little less yahoo. Peter Menzies is a senior fellow with the Work Research Foundation