Justin Trudeau’s promise to plant 2 billion trees by 2030 is slow to take root: the environment commissioner considers the achievement of the objective “unlikely” since only 2.3% of the planned trees would have been planted so far.
In a report submitted to Parliament on Thursday, Commissioner Jerry V. DeMarco blames the lack of long-term agreements signed with the provinces and territories, and suggests that Ottawa speed up the pace.
“The delays in signing the agreements have not only hampered Natural Resources Canada’s ability to plant the estimated number of trees for 2022, but will also impact subsequent years, for which even more ambitious planting targets have been set. been established,” writes the commissioner.
In 2022, for example, the agreements signed so far would have made it possible to plant 16.5 million trees, far from the 60 million initially planned in the ten-year plan.
The promise to plant 2 billion trees to capture carbon was one of the Liberal camp’s key ideas in the 2019 federal election.
“The Government of Canada is making significant progress and remains confident in its ability to plant two billion trees and reduce emissions under the program over the next decade,” commented the spokesperson for the Minister of Environment Steven Guilbeault.
It should be added that the project will emit more greenhouse gases than it will capture over the next ten years. However, trees will increasingly bear fruit from the 2030s, since it takes time for them to grow sufficiently to exploit their capture potential.
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Ottawa skinned by other reports
In addition to the audit on tree planting, Commissioner DeMarco served four other reports that cast shadow on the government’s actions on the environment, particularly with regard to the protection of endangered species.
Even if “the federal government has the power to intervene to counter imminent threats to species”, it “lacks initiatives and policies to guide its actions”.
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“The measures taken by [le ministère] do not reflect the urgency of the global biodiversity crisis,” DeMarco said at a press conference. He notes that 146 of the 257 action plans needed to protect species have not yet been produced.
On the other hand, the government does not assess the individual impact on the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of some of its environmental measures.
By way of example, the Commissioner found that some significant sources of methane emissions, a gas with warming potential about 25 times greater than CO2were not taken into account in the government’s analyses.