There was a short news clip about a week ago. It captured the Canadian minister of energy and natural resources smiling for the cameras. The video showed him joining the mayor of Surrey, B.C. Together, Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and Mayor Brenda Locke planted a tree symbolic of long-range plans to help restore Canada’s tree population, reduce the effects of severe weather (flooding or drought) and rescue a warming planet.
“Planting two billion trees over 10 years is a key part of Canada’s plan to fight climate change,” Wilkinson said on August 2. “Every tree planted is a step toward a healthier, more sustainable Canada.”
The mayor added, “The 35,000 trees we are planting in parks throughout Surrey will … improve air quality and mitigate the effects of climate change.”
In contrast, this past April, Jerry DeMarco, the federal environment commissioner (Office of the Auditor General), told reporters that Ottawa’s 2019 “Two Billion Trees by 2030” election promise will not get even a tenth of that number of trees in the ground in time. He admitted that the Liberal government had followed through in 2020 with $3.2 billion assigned to tree planting.
According to a Canadian Press update on the scheme earlier this spring, the government said it would get 30 million trees planted in 2021, and another 60 million in 2022, but it’s already behind schedule for 45 million of those plantings.
“It’s clear that we have repeatedly rung the alarm bells,” DeMarco told CP. “Now, those bells are almost deafening!”
So, what’s the problem? Well, first of all, it’s not the federal government that’s planting the trees; the feds don’t just call up college students, tree farms and national park wardens to tell them to get out there and plant more trees. Like so many transactions between Ottawa and other jurisdictions, the federal government has to get funding partners, provincial and territorial governments, Indigenous communities, cities and private landowners to sign agreements.
The Canadian Press story in April showed that 94 such agreements were being negotiated in 2022, but only 23 of them had actual signatures on them. As of last fall seven provinces and territories had signed on – not Ontario, by the way.
Meanwhile, in recent years, Rotary Club of Uxbridge has quietly worked to do its share of environmental repair – planting trees at the Fields of Uxbridge, as well as trees and shrubs at Bonner Field. Financed by grants from Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority and TD Friends of the Environment Foundation, the service club is seeking final approval from Township Council to plant seedlings along a swale at Bonner Field this fall to ameliorate water accumulation.
But there’s a hitch. Some residents adjacent to the park have raised concerns about the planting. As Terry Baskin, past president of Rotary, reminded me. “The plantings will provide tremendous short- and long-term benefit.”
In other words, it looks as if Canada’s problem is a Canadian problem. We cannot seem to get public unanimity to plant trees to save the planet. Nor can we apparently move the yardsticks of bureaucracy to get government departments, business organizations, environmental watchdogs, service groups and the public together fast enough to get seedlings into the ground two billion times! And time’s-a-wastin’.
Quite literally, we’re “fiddling while Rome burns.” The latest statistics – published on Tuesday of this week by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre – show that in 2023 nearly 5,500 fires have burned over 33 million acres of land. That’s four per cent of the entire forested area of Canada … so far!
It’s time we got more serious about tree planting. And, without realizing it, I’ve kind of done my bit. In the spring of 1966, I managed to convince several of my friends to accompany me to a hobby farm my family owned near Bethany, Ont. I had a project in mind. The weather forecast was good. Mom promised to keep my friends fed. Dad promised refreshment to quench their thirst.
Two days of labour later, we’d planted 1,000 evergreen trees. You see, I’d hoodwinked my friends into planting Christmas trees that I fully intended to grow, harvest and sell each December when the trees were mature. Well, I groomed those 1,000 trees (and another 2,000 I planted in 1967).
And, yes, I harvested a handful for the family. But I never cut down and sold a single one. Today, on that farm (the family sold in 1990) at the corner of Hwys 35 and 7A, there’s an evergreen forest, now 50 feet tall and 57 years old.
So, maybe it’s time to short-circuit the bureaucracy, get off our butts as individuals and start saving the planet one tree-planting at a time.