Ottawa misses tree planting target again

Photo: Olivier Zuida Le Devoir Only 46.6 million trees have been planted so far under the 2 Billion Trees program.

The federal government needed a full year to count the trees it planted last year in line with its promise to plant two billion in 10 years. Its 2023 report is silent on the fact that it is again missing its planting target.

Some 46.6 million trees were planted on approximately 1,600 sites across the country during the third planting season, Natural Resources Canada confirms. This is less than the modest target of 60 million set for 2023 in the initial plan, which already counted on a spectacular acceleration in the rate of planting in the coming years.

The ministry waited until Wednesday, the day after the November 5 US election, to release this bad news and did not present it as such. However, its spokesperson, Michael MacDonald, had promised Devoir in August that the 2023 report would be “available soon.” He then wrongly announced its publication for the week of September 30.

The officials gave no explanation to Devoir concerning the multiple postponements of the publication of the annual report of the 2 billion trees program. The document finally released on Wednesday presented only aggregated data. Officials needed an extra day to confirm the Duty calculations specific to the year 2023.

Last year, Natural Resources Canada falsely announced that the program was exceeding its planting targets, arbitrarily adding 54 million trees that had been funded by another department, as part of an entirely different project launched before the Liberals’ 2019 campaign promise.

The federal Minister of Natural Resources was then forced to admit that, despite its name, the 2 Billion Trees program was never designed to fund the planting of two billion trees. Jonathan Wilkinson then spoke of a target of 1.8 billion trees to be planted in 10 years, a figure absent from any official documentation.

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94% of the effort to be made

With three years on the clock, a maximum of 103.5 million trees have been planted in accordance with the Liberal promise, according to calculations by Devoir. This is the equivalent of less than 6% of the new objective of 1.8 billion trees. This leaves only seven seasons left to plant 1.7 billion trees, including the 2024 season, for which data is not yet available.

The federal government, however, boasts of having concluded — or being in the process of negotiating — planting agreements totaling 716 million trees. The government announced at the same time 30 new projects totaling $200 million, including five in Quebec, even though the Legault government has not yet announced an agreement with Ottawa on this matter. For example, the City of Joliette received $1.1 million from Ottawa to plant 10,000 trees “to improve the urban canopy and quality of life in low-income neighbourhoods, as well as reduce urban heat islands.”

The life cycle of trees means that it takes many years for a young shoot to begin capturing carbon. The 2 Billion Trees program is therefore associated with strict rules that prevent the harvesting of these trees by the forestry industry. Quebec is requesting a relaxation of this criterion in order to participate in the effort.

Ottawa continues to count in all its communications trees planted in 2021 under a completely different project, the Low Carbon Economy Fund, which falls under the Department of Environment and Climate Change Canada, to claim that “Canada has managed to plant” a total of 157 million trees.

In 2023, Canada’s environment commissioner concluded that it was impossible for Ottawa to meet its planting targets for the 2 Billion Trees program that year. A delay also means lower carbon capture from the atmosphere, the program’s primary climate goal. According to the targets Ottawa set for itself when it announced the $3.2 billion program, a successful 2024 season would mean planting 100 million trees. That’s the equivalent of what the program has planted in the past three years combined.