Alberta’s Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors says, overall, Budget 2025 was good for his portfolio.
Devin Dreeshen – who is also the MLA for Innisfail-Sylvan Lake – is looking forward to getting lots of projects done this year with over a three per cent increase from the last budget for roads, bridges, and water projects all across the province. He says “Highway 791, just east of Innisfail, is to see some major repair work to the base as well as widening that main artery kind of bypassing Highway 2 just east of Innisfail and going up to Red Deer. So that is a really important project, as well as Junction 42 in Red Deer County. There’s lots of projects around Sylvan Lake. So there is really good road projects that we are seeing in Central Alberta.”
In Budget 2025, $3.4 billion dollars is allocated to Transportation and Economic Corridors. Dreeshen highlights the Highway 3 twinning down south, improvements to the Deerfoot Trail in Calgary and the Yellowhead Trail in Edmonton, and more work to be done on Highway 686 that eventually would connect Fort McMurray to Grande Prairie through the north.
Dreeshen is slated to be up by Sandy Lake on Tuesday, March 4th to provide an update on highway projects in Northern Alberta.
Meanwhile, a two billion dollar contingency fund for Alberta has been increased to four billion in Budget 2025.
According to Dreeshen, the contingency fund outlined in last week’s budget announcement accounts for looming tariffs and the uncertainty that brings. He says “so that is something that hopefully we don’t have to use, but if we do have another bad wildfire season or drought or any unexpected harm through any U.S. tariffs that’s where that four billion dollars will be utilized in this budget. It is something that is there, but ideally we won’t have to use it as a province.”
