The federal government has yet to release its tally of trees planted last summer in its plan to grow two billion in a decade, while a report by the commissioner of the environment suggests a complete failure of its target.
A whole winter and a spring will not have been enough for the federal government to compile the information of its partners who planted these trees in 2022. The ministry responsible had however promised to publish this number in the spring.
“As for the specific number of trees planted, final estimates of the numbers of trees planted the previous year are normally ready by late spring,” Natural Resources spokesperson Jay Medland wrote in May. Canada.
Even Canada’s Environmental Commissioner, the agent of Parliament charged with overseeing government actions, said in his report that he expects “the final number of trees planted in the summer of 2022 [soit] available after May 2023”.
Far from the target
Commissioner Jerry V. DeMarco did not limit himself to this timeline, and began in April to calculate himself the trees that should be planted in 2022. He came to the conclusion that the federal government probably missed its target of 60 million trees for last year. If all the signed agreements had been honored, less than a third of these trees, or 16.5 million, would have seen the light of day. This is much less than the 29 million planted the previous year, while the program must on the contrary increase its pace prodigiously.
This unofficial count was greeted with denial by the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault.
” [Pour] 2022, we don’t have all the results yet, but it will be around 60 million [d’arbres]. We need to get up to cruising speed fairly quickly where we can work together to plant 300 million trees a year. We remain committed to achieving this goal, ”he replied to journalists at the time.
For the 2021 season, the calculation of the number of trees planted was made public on June 22 of the following year. The office of the minister responsible, Jonathan Wilkinson of Natural Resources, declined to tell the Duty whether the report expected this year should confirm, or not, the spectacular failure of its objective for 2022.
However, he recalled that his ministry had already mentioned “summer 2023” as the deadline for the publication of the report of the last planting season, which makes him say that there is no delay yet.
“The program intends this year to provide Canadians with a full report on the progress of the 2022 planting season in the summer of 2023, once partners report the final number of trees planted over the course of the year. of the program’s second year,” reads a backgrounder released in April.
Conflict with prominent provinces
According to Canada’s Environment Commissioner Jerry V. DeMarco, the failure of the 2022 planting season is partly due to the fact that the December 2021 call for proposals was not open to the provinces. Ottawa requires them to sign “agreements in principle” to access funding. To date, seven provinces and territories have signed the tentative agreement, but not Quebec or Ontario.
Mr. DeMarco also sees a future plagued with problems of collaboration between the federal government and the provinces on this subject, since the latter would be responsible for planting two-thirds of the trees, according to the plan. “The lack of agreements [à long terme avec les provinces] constitute [e] a considerable risk to the program,” he wrote.
The two billion tree program is set to cost the federal government $3.2 billion over 10 years, starting in 2021. It aims to fund projects primarily from provinces and territories, but also municipalities, non-profit organizations governments, indigenous communities and even private owners.