The Liberals' ambitious plan to plant two billion trees will take a generation to show significant climate benefits, according to the Department of Natural Resources. Initially announced in 2019 by then-Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, the project is estimated to cost $5.9 billion.“We had initial projections and we continue to calibrate those,” Glenn Hargrove, assistant deputy minister, testified at the Senate national finance committee. “The major emissions reductions will be sort of toward 2050 as opposed to in the next few years.”Blacklock's Reporter says Hargrove explained the challenges.“When you plant trees, the activities that take place in order to ready the soil in the area to plant those trees also sort of disturb carbon. Young trees absorb less carbon than mature trees. It’s sort of like human beings. Babies eat less food than teenagers. Once those trees start to grow, that’s when they really start to absorb that carbon," he said.The Liberal Party’s 2019 election platform promised to plant two billion trees within a decade. However, Hargrove revealed that only a quarter of that target has been planted to date.“How many trees have been planted?” asked Senator Larry Smith (Que.). “We are at 553 million trees to plant,” replied Hargrove, including seedlings scheduled for planting this summer.“This is a major undertaking as you know,” Hargrove said. “We like to say it’s a marathon not a sprint. It is essentially a 40% increase in tree planting across Canada over a decade. We have been ramping up the supply chain.”When asked about a completion date, Hargrove said, “I can’t give an exact date on when the two billion trees will be planted exactly but I think we are making very strong progress. We know there has to be a ramp-up. At this point in the program we are at 553 million.”Forestry companies currently plant about 600 million trees annually as a condition of cutting on Crown land, according to the Department of Natural Resources. Canada has approximately 318 billion trees over 858 million acres, per the Yale School of Forestry.Environment Commissioner Jerry DeMarco criticized the program in a 2023 report, saying it was “unlikely to succeed” and accusing managers of double-counting trees to inflate numbers.“It has become a tree counting program not a tree planting program,” DeMarco testified last October 17 at the Commons environment committee. “They count the same tree twice with different programs.”
