2025 Speech from the Throne

Press Release

Oct 23, 2025

The second session of the 31st legislature opened October 23, 2025 with a speech from the throne delivered by Her Honour, the Honourable Salma Lakhani, AOE, B.Sc., LLD (hon) Lieutenant Governor of Alberta.

Introduction

Mr. Speaker, Honourable Members of the legislative assembly and fellow Albertans: I open this second session of the 31st legislature as His Majesty the King’s representative.

Today we gather on Treaty 6 territory, and I invite all Honourable Members to reflect upon and acknowledge the traditional territories of the First Peoples of this land and their invaluable contributions to our province and country. I also recognize Métis people in Alberta, who share a deep connection with this land.

Federal and U.S. relations

Two and a half years ago, we gathered in this Chamber following the 2023 provincial election for the first throne speech of this 31st legislature.

At that time Albertans found themselves in the midst of a tumultuous political storm that threatened our province’s very economic and social fabric in profound ways, as the then-federal government’s policies constrained our energy sector, interfered in multiple areas of provincial jurisdiction, and undermined the integrity of the power grid Albertans rely on for light and to keep their families safe on cold Alberta winter nights.

That political storm then intensified further as our largest trading partner and ally threatened unprecedented tariffs on all Canadian exports headed south – including on all Alberta energy and agricultural products – which would have resulted in tens of thousands of lost Alberta jobs and billions in lost provincial revenues.

In the midst of that tumultuous time, at perhaps the most critical juncture in our province’s modern history, Alberta’s government made a promise in that 2023 throne speech. It was – and I QUOTE – “The world needs more Alberta energy – not less – and Alberta’s government intends to empower Albertans to deliver it” – UNQUOTE.

Honourable Members, that is exactly what this government has done every moment since that time, and it will continue to do so until the job is done.

This government has driven back the anti-energy movement in our country and helped to turn the tide of national public opinion from anti-oil and gas sentiment into a national consensus that Alberta’s energy resources are a national treasure that can and must be developed aggressively using the made-in-Alberta technologies that allow us to do so in the most environmentally responsible manner.

This turning of Canadian political power and public opinion was unthinkable just a few short years ago.

Alberta is winning and will continue to win this battle for our freedom and provincial rights – because your government believes we are on the right side of history and Albertans will not be denied their prosperous future.

As a result, this government is now partnering with Canada’s greatest oil pipeline companies and First Nations to end the landlocking of Alberta’s oilsands by building new oil pipelines to our nation’s west coast in order to access the largest market on earth – Asia. This pipeline will bring wealth and prosperity to millions across Canada; and because it will be co-owned by First Nations in Alberta and British Columbia, no people will benefit more than the First Peoples whose lands this pipeline will cross. It’s one thing to speak about economic reconciliation with First Nations – it is quite another to actually do it. And Alberta is leading the way.

Alberta is also working with the Province of Ontario to build an oil pipeline to southeastern Ontario to ensure the energy security of Canada’s two largest provinces – Ontario and Quebec – which currently rely entirely on the U.S.-controlled Line 5 for their energy needs.

In addition, this government is cooperating with Manitoba, Saskatchewan and First Nations to open up the Hudson Bay to oil and gas export, and to access the massive European market desperate for a non-Russian supply of energy from a trusted friend and ally.

And through hundreds of hours of advocacy and diplomacy, this government has thus far convinced our American friends and allies that they do indeed need Alberta’s energy resources. We have shown them that their country enjoys a tremendous amount of wealth and jobs because of the vast amount of energy exports pouring over their northern border from our province.

In fact, both the American and Canadian governments now agree that strengthening and increasing the Canadian-U.S. energy partnership will be critical to achieving a lasting and mutually beneficial trade deal for both countries.

As a result of this government’s diplomatic victory with the United States, the vast majority of Alberta exports – from energy to agriculture and almost everything else – have remained tariff-free.

This success would not have been achieved had this province taken a different approach – burning bridges with our U.S. friends while waiting for the federal government to protect our provincial interests, as many in certain quarters demanded.

And this government will continue with its direct Alberta-U.S. diplomacy and respectful dialogue rather than using anti-American rhetoric. The results of both strategies have spoken for themselves, and Alberta’s approach is clearly the right one.

Now Honourable Members, make no mistake, the job with the federal government and the Americans is not done. There are many important issues to work through with our federal and provincial partners, along with First Nations, to fully unleash the Alberta energy sector. And the threat of future large American tariffs on all Canadian exports is still a real possibility.

But the tide of this nation has undeniably turned and your government will not rest until Alberta has doubled its oil and gas production, increased and diversified agricultural and other exports to the U.S. and the rest of the world, and restored constitutional balance to this country with provincial and federal governments working as equal partners, respecting each other’s exclusive areas of jurisdiction while co-operatively working together on areas of shared responsibility.

If we wish to have a strong, independent and unified Canada, this is the way to achieve it. And your government will not stop until that job is done.

Economy and budget

Honourable Members, although the change in fortunes federally give us much to be hopeful for, Alberta remains in choppy economic waters.

The U.S. worldwide imposition of tariffs, world conflicts and intentional increases in OPEC production have significantly depressed the price of oil, resulting in a loss of billions in royalty revenues and a significant budget deficit after several years of large surpluses.

Albertans are well aware of the effects of both high and low oil prices and inherently understand there is no need to panic or overreact. This isn’t Alberta’s first oil price rollercoaster, after all.

The vast majority of Albertans do not want deep and disruptive cuts. Nor do they want declarations of economic emergency used as a pretext for a proliferation of government programs and spending.

They want calm, steady and smart fiscal leadership until the dip in energy prices inevitably passes, as it always does.

They expect this government to continue to hold spending increases to below inflation plus population growth, to find and eliminate government waste and inefficiencies and to invest wisely in priorities such as health, education, roads, policing and other core social services.

And that is exactly how this government will manage Alberta’s current challenging economic situation.

However, unlike many past Alberta governments, this government has set in motion a three-part plan to ensure that by the year 2050, Albertans will never again be reliant on non-renewable resources to maintain our low-tax advantage and excellent core social services and infrastructure.

First, this government is committed to grow the Alberta Heritage Trust Fund to well over $250 billion by 2050, mirroring sovereign wealth funds in other energy-rich nations such as Norway, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

This will be accomplished by prohibiting government from spending the investment returns earned in the Heritage Fund until at least 2050, and instead use those investment returns – as well as the bulk of royalty surpluses enjoyed in times of high oil and gas prices – to grow the fund dramatically.

This effort has already begun to pay off with the Heritage Fund having grown from $16.3 billion to nearly $30 billion in just the last few years, with the goal of reaching $35 billion by 2027.

Second, the government has committed to holding spending increases to below inflation plus population growth. To accomplish this and ensure Albertans’ tax dollars are targeted to priorities, your government has launched a Cabinet and MLA review of all programs and grants across all government departments to reduce or eliminate spending that has become unnecessary or redundant.

And third, the government will further diversify Alberta’s economy with a special focus on sectors where this province already enjoys a strategic advantage.

The most exciting example of this is Alberta’s drive to become a world-leading jurisdiction in artificial intelligence, by using our almost inexhaustible supplies of natural gas to fuel the massive amounts of power required for AI data centres. This, combined with Alberta’s highly educated population and exceptional post-secondary institutions, will be integral to developing and scaling AI data-driven applications in medicine, technology and every other sector.

Alberta is already an energy superpower. Alberta will now also become an AI superpower, making our province a world leader in arguably the world’s two most important commodities – energy and computing power.

And Alberta will not stop there. Your government will continue to advance our province’s emerging industries in aerospace, defence, technology, value-added agriculture and forestry products, critical minerals, alternative energy and environmental technology while investing in infrastructure for tourism, arts, culture and sport.

The days of hearing that Alberta needs to start diversifying its economy are over.

Alberta’s economy is already diversified and will continue to strengthen and grow by turning our province’s historic strengths and advantages into future prosperity and opportunity, resulting in an economy and balance sheet that is the envy of the world. Alberta is well on its way.

Immigration and infrastructure

Alberta’s success comes with a challenge. When people across the country and around the world see the prosperity of those living here, they want to share in that opportunity.

The Alberta Advantage has acted as a magnet for population growth for decades. And let there be no doubt about how important immigration and interprovincial migration have been to our success. New Albertans from other provinces and countries have been essential to our economic prosperity and rich culture.

Alberta’s history of healthy levels of primarily economic immigrants able to almost seamlessly integrate into Alberta’s economy and culture has been entirely upended by the last 10 years of federal immigration policies which have resulted in an unsustainable level of newcomers entering our province.

This has led to Albertans of all ages, backgrounds and immigration history becoming concerned with high unemployment, inflation and substantial growth pressures on our province’s social infrastructure.

That is why the Government of Alberta will seek to take more active control over provincial immigration in the coming months and years.

Using Alberta’s constitutionally protected provincial rights, the government of Alberta will return to a more stable number of primarily economic migrants, so that newcomers come here to work and contribute as they have historically done, while Canadian citizens living in Alberta are given first priority to the social programs, jobs and opportunities our economy creates.

Investment in infrastructure

And although right-sizing Alberta’s growth rate is critical, our province cannot afford waiting to make the investments in infrastructure that are needed to catch up with the growth that has already occurred.

This is why your government will invest $8.6 billion to open up 200,000 new school spaces across the province over the coming years.

That’s also why your government will hire thousands of new teachers and educational assistants over the next three years.

It’s why Alberta will spend billions more in expanding road networks across the province, including completion of the Deerfoot Trail expansion in Calgary, the Yellowhead in Edmonton, and twinning Highway 3 in southern Alberta, Highway 11 in central Alberta, and Highway 63 in northern Alberta, along with the continued improvements to Highways 88 and 686 in northern Alberta.

It’s why your government will invest in the expansion of Edmonton’s and Calgary’s light-rail transit systems, and roll out a provincial passenger-rail strategy that will see commuter rail built out over the coming decades to ease the growing burden on the QE2 and Trans Canada highways. We can’t, after all, keep adding lanes on these congested roadways forever. As Alberta continues to grow, public transit must be part of the solution.

This government will also continue to invest hundreds of millions in municipal infrastructure for our growing communities and open thousands of new spaces at our post-secondary institutions, targeting most new investment for those programs in the trades, AI, health and other sectors where Albertans and our economy have the most need.

Your government will also hire hundreds of new police officers, modernize and expand court services, reduce red tape and work to decrease and slow the rise of electricity and insurance costs through the implementation of the province’s reformed electricity market and care-first auto insurance system.

This government will continue to make the investments in infrastructure and social services that Albertans need. And it will continue to reform and modernize our province’s social services to ensure that Albertans are enjoying the most choice and highest quality of any services in Canada.

And there is no more important social service than health care.

Health care

Honourable Members, for far too long in this province and country, the growing crisis in our provincial public health care systems has been neglected.

This government believes that Canada’s health care systems are broken. They are typically administered by large unaccountable bureaucracies that have centralized power and control, at the expense of front-line staff and healing patients.

Our country has among the poorest health system outcomes in the industrialized world, often resulting in tragic and life-shortening consequences.

We have well-trained and compassionate doctors, nurses and other front-line staff, but have difficulty keeping them in Canada due to subpar working conditions, rationed operating-room time and better opportunities in other nations.

And no matter how much money this country and its provinces spend – the results have not materially improved. In fact, they are deteriorating in every single province whether governed by Liberals, New Democrats or Conservatives.

Honourable Members, this government decided two and a half years ago that it would take action rather than continuing to throw billions of tax dollars into an underperforming and unambitious AHS bureaucracy.

Instead, your government acted decisively to reform our provincial health system, and although it has not been without its challenges, we are seeing improvements each and every day.

Wait times for surgical services are coming down.

The number of doctors and nurses is increasing.

Less is being spent on bureaucracy and more on the front lines.

And with the transfer of authority over the administration of the Alberta health care system from AHS to four targeted health agencies overseen directly by a dedicated and accountable government ministry, Alberta is now well positioned to further accelerate desperately needed health care reforms.

The Ministry of Mental Health and Addiction is well down the path of implementing the world-renowned Alberta Recovery Model for addiction with the construction of 11 recovery communities and is poised to commence operations of the Compassionate Intervention Program that will mandate treatment in secure facilities for addicts who are a danger to themselves or others.

The Alberta model has already saved thousands, and compassionate intervention will save thousands more.

The Ministry of Assisted Living and Social Services is doing essential work across our provincial health system, ensuring our seniors find community care with the level of support they require for their medical needs.

They are leading a new effort to transfer non-acute patients – primarily seniors who have spent hundreds of days living in a hospital bed – into accommodations far better suited for their care and quality of life. This will not only result in better care for those individuals but will also free up hundreds of acute hospital beds for Albertans with more urgent needs.

This government’s third area of focus in health is primary and preventative care, because every dollar invested wisely in prevention means less premature death, higher quality of life and significantly fewer tax dollars spent on expensive surgeries and hospital care.

With the new doctors’ contract focused on quality of patient care – rather than quantity of visits – and this government’s empowerment of nurse practitioners to open their own practices, Albertans are more able to secure the primary care they and their families need.

This government will go a step further on health prevention and introduce new legislation that empowers Albertans with more choices by leveraging access to private diagnostic tests and screening using the latest AI and other emerging technologies. This means that individuals and their employers will be able to invest directly in the preventative health care needs of themselves, their families and their employees.

And although stronger preventative care will decrease the need for more serious medical interventions, there inevitably will always be a need for hospital and surgical services.

However, the outdated model of building massive new multi-billion-dollar hospitals that take half a decade or more to build – and then are almost always underused when opened – must end.

That is why this government is pursuing a different path and will focus precious tax dollars and efforts on increasing specialized chartered surgical centres that will compete – along with AHS, Covenant Health, and other providers – to deliver more surgeries and treatments faster.

This government will do so by moving away from a wasteful and inefficient block-funding model for our public hospitals towards a more competitive and responsive activity-based funding model.

This new model will increase transparency by paying public hospitals and surgical centers for the amount and complexity of the services they actually provide patients, ensuring that no longer will bureaucrats try to guess which facilities should receive more tax dollars with no accountability for the services provided.

The days of an antiquated, bureaucratic and unaccountable health system are over, Honourable Members. Albertans want more surgeries and better results from their health care system, and it’s time to bring that system out of the 1960s and into 2025 where the rest of the world’s developed nations already reside.

Justice and public safety

And just as access to world-class health care when and where Albertans need it is critically important, so too is the need for safe communities and the protection of personal rights and freedoms.

Policies such as ‘safe supply’, criminal-first bail and sentencing rules, social engineering of children and institutionalized censorship are just a few examples of policies that have needlessly destroyed, and even ended, the lives of thousands in our country.

This government has taken a stand against these dangerous and destructive policies when few other governments in the western world would.

Alberta will continue to march forward with the freedom and justice policies and initiatives that save lives and make communities safe.

This government will fund – not defund – the police.

It will seek justice for victims, not excuses for the guilty.

It will replace the enabling of continued drug use for the addicted with providing treatment and a means to recovery.

It will protect the rights of law-abiding gun owners by refusing to enforce any federal seizure program and focus instead on fighting real criminals and securing our borders against them.

It will lift up and support those who struggle with mental health rather than give them the means to end their lives because of it.

And while Ottawa and other governments around the world seek to institutionalize the censorship of free speech, your government will forge an accelerated path in the opposite direction with legislation that contains comprehensive free-speech protections for regulated professionals. This new legislation, when combined with the Alberta Bill of Rights amendments passed last year, will solidify Alberta’s status as the freest jurisdiction in Canada.

And Honourable Members, Alberta will unapologetically protect our province’s children by removing graphic pornographic images from schools, ensuring children reach adulthood before choosing to change their gender and protecting the critical role and status of parents as the primary caregiver and decision maker for their children.

This government will never back down in its protection of children or strengthening the rights and freedoms that have made our province the shining city on a hill that it is today.

Sovereignty and independence

In closing, Honourable Members, this government has been clear and will continue to be so. Your government believes in a strong, free and sovereign Alberta within a united Canada.

Sovereignty does not mean separation. Strength and self-determination do not have to mean national independence.

And one can love this province with all their heart – and love our nation just as much.

In fact, it is your government’s view that both Canada and Alberta can only succeed when a proper constitutional balance has been restored and Alberta is empowered to freely pursue its full potential while Ottawa focuses its efforts on key areas of federal jurisdiction.

The vast majority of Albertans understand this need for change in our federal-provincial relationship, and that is why your government has spent the last several months meeting with thousands of Albertans in Alberta Next town halls that have been viewed by over three quarters of a million people in every corner of the province.

That panel is now deliberating on what was heard and learned during these meetings, and it will soon make recommendations as to what initiatives are worth pursuing immediately to strengthen Alberta’s sovereignty within Canada, and which initiatives should be put to a referendum of Albertans.

And your government does not fear that will or judgment of Albertans. In fact, it is the will and judgment of Albertans that this government shall uphold and serve, whatever the people ultimately decide.

Your government is also actively negotiating with the federal government to gain additional pipeline access to Asian, European and U.S. markets, and to remove or overhaul several federal laws and policies that have profoundly damaged Alberta’s economy for the last decade.

Reaching a grand bargain between Alberta and Canada to restore these provincial rights and economic freedoms is critical.

Because at the end of it all – Albertans will be the ones to decide the future of our province. And they will choose what they see as the best path forward to prosperity for their children, grandchildren and fellow Albertans. And in doing so our magnificent province and its people shall remain forever strong and free.

Thank you, Honourable Members. May God Bless Alberta and May God Save the King.

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