Diane Francis: Trudeau’s promise to plant 2 billion trees nothing but greenwashing

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This is about trees and Justin Trudeau, in particular his massive tree-planting promise in 2019 that has yet to happen.

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So why is this important during an election campaign? Because this particular issue best and simply illustrates his modus operandi which is to concoct policies that are unjustified, unformulated, unfunded and unfulfilled.

The tree idea was given to him during his photo-op with climate change poster girl, Greta Thunberg. He turned this into a 2019 campaign promise that Canada would plant two-billion trees to help fight climate change.

Never mind the fact that Canada already has about 318 billion trees, making this country a gigantic carbon sink because of its vast storehouse of trees, muskeg, and farmland.

Science has never been a strong suit for Trudeau, so undaunted he repeated his 2-billion-tree promise in the September 24, 2020 Speech from the Throne. It stated that the government would meet its 2030 climate change commitments, in part, by “using nature-based solutions to fight climate change, including by planting two billion trees.”

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But hardly a tree has been put in the ground by Trudeau, nor has a dime been allocated to do so for two years. Ironically, this is what environmentalists label as “greenwashing” or virtue-signalling without action.

What’s also interesting is that besides contributing mightily to removing CO2 from the atmosphere because of our massive number of trees, Canadians plant 600,000 more annually through public and private forestry and conservation programs. These also soak up CO2, and so does our massive farmland base and our arctic tundra and wetlands.

But back in 2019, Trudeau ignored Canada’s existing endowment when he made his pledge: “Trees are remarkable. They pull carbon out of the atmosphere. They are renewable and they’re sustainable and, eventually, they even recycle themselves. All we have to do is plant the first one.”

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Finally as the election call approached, on June 4, 2021, Trudeau trotted out his Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan who told the CBC that 30 million trees will be planted “this season” CBC reported. This was puzzling given that the pledge requires more than 200 million a year to hit 2 billion by 2030.

O’Regan explained the delay was because seedlings need time to grow and the project needed nursery space, land to plant them in, and some sort of monitoring to ensure the trees survive. (By the way, two billion trees will fill a territory twice the size of Prince Edward Island.)

He added the number of trees planted will grow progressively each year, but his office provided a graph that showed his department expects to have planted 500 million trees by 2026, and then more than one billion in total by 2028. That’s not 2 billion trees as promised.

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On top of that shortfall, the $3 billion allocated for the program is inadequate and “the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) suggests the final price tag will be closer to double that,” according to the CBC.

“There’ll be significant ramp-up,” said O’Regan. “It takes time to get those seeds in place. This is a long-term play for us though, so it is well worth the wait.”

So there you have it. A prime minister who “greenwashes” and makes announcements about planting two billion trees, which we don’t need, then does nothing for two years and only now admits the goal cannot be reached in time because it’s such a big number.

Given this, I’m truly stumped as to why Canadians ever voted for him.

Financial Post