Alberta Premier Rachel Notley didn’t just extend an olive branch to oil and gas leaders and investors on Tuesday. She brought the whole tree and shook it, raining down petals of praise and friendship.

Notley delivered a flat-out endorsement of continued investment and expansion of the oilsands.

The scene was the Stampede Investment Forum at McDougall Centre, with 24 international investors from 14 countries, 120 people from the industry, and eight members of Notley’s 11-member cabinet, including the premier.

Media weren’t allowed in, but Notley’s office made her speech available, and reports from the inside suggest widespread delight at her declaration that the oilsands “are a tremendous asset which have transformed Alberta into one of the world’s leading oil producers.”

A string of comments like that from the premier led Steve Allan, chairman of Calgary Economic Development, to call Notley’s speech “one of the better ones I’ve heard in a long time from an Alberta leader. It was first-class, couldn’t have been better.”

Notley delivered a flat-out endorsement of continued investment and expansion of the oilsands. It won’t please the left side of her party by de-emphasizing (but not ignoring) climate change and the environment.

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This speech was a big change in tone from her recent campaign rhetoric, which focused on the royalty review and promised to “deliver better value to Albertans for the shared resources we all own together.”

On April 10, in full campaign mode, Notley said: “The Progressive Conservatives have squandered our wealth with a fire sale of our resources. We will stop the fire sale and start rewarding businesses that create upgrading and refining jobs at home.”

Notley was talking to voters then. On Tuesday, she spoke to big money. She wants it for the Alberta industry as much as any PC premier ever did. So she issued what amounted to a lifetime guarantee that investment will be safe under an NDP government.

“Expanding existing oilsands projects, establishing new ones and pioneering advanced technologies — all this requires spending on a large scale,” she said.