It depends. $5000 is both the Federal (and Alberta) maximum on how much can be transferred. This doesn't mean you'll always get to transfer the full $5000, though. If a student has less than $5000 in tuition or they have already used some (or all) of their tuition reducing their own tax payable, then the amount they can transfer will be less than $5000.
Also, even if you can transfer the full $5000, you may not want to. If the person who's going to receive the transfer has less that $5000 in taxes owning, then there is no point in transfer the full $5000 because the receiver can't use it.
Furthermore, the Federal and Provincial transfers are separate from each other. So it's possible for a student with $6000 in tuition to be able to transfer $5000 for the federal amount and $5000 for the provincial amount .
