Alberta’s Oilsands Just Became Investable Again
Ottawa’s policy pivot and Alberta’s regulatory win just rewrote the investment story for Canada’s most misunderstood sector.
For the better part of a decade, if you mentioned Canadian heavy oil in a room full of global investors, the reaction was somewhere between eye-rolling and a polite cough. The narrative was brutally simple: Alberta’s oilsands were a giant, sticky stranded asset – too carbon-intensive, too far from tidewater, and politically radioactive. Capital fled, valuations cratered, and the energy weight in the S&P/TSX Composite shrank to embarrassing levels.
Fast-forward to December 2025 and that obituary suddenly looks premature.
National Bank of Canada strategists, led by chief economist Stéfane Marion, just fired a shot across the bow of the ESG crowd: the oilsands are no longer persona non grata in Ottawa, and that policy U-turn could be the rocket fuel the TSX needs after gold’s monster 2025 run finally takes a breather.
The numbers this year have been absurd. The S&P/TSX Composite is already up roughly 30% year-to-date and flirting with its best annual performance since 2009. Gold stocks, riding the yellow metal past $3,000 an ounce, now make up more than 12% of the entire index – a record high more than double the long-term average. For the first time since 2016, Toronto is actually embarrassing the S&P 500 in an up market.
But gold doesn’t grow on trees forever (well, technically it does, but you get the point). So where does the next leg come from?

