With a fraction of promised 2 billion trees planted, minister says pledge ‘a marathon… not a sprint’

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson is kicking off the 2023 tree-planting season with an announcement that the federal government and B.C. have reached an agreement to plant more than 37 million trees in the province in the next two years, but the government remains far from reaching its goal of two billion trees in this decade.

During the 2019 election campaign, the Liberals committed to planting two billion trees this decade, but as of last December, they’re falling short, at nearly 1.5 per cent of the end goal — with about 29 million trees planted so far — something they attribute to the years it takes to grow seedlings that can then be planted.

“Planting two billion trees is a marathon, it is not a sprint,” Wilkinson said. “Care must be taken to ensure that the right trees are planted at/in the right place the right time, and for the right reasons.”

Spread out over the 10-year commitment, the government would need to plant an additional 200 million trees a year beyond current tallies. That’s nearly 548,000 trees a day. However, tree planting is a seasonal effort and can’t be done year-round, instead taking place during four to five months of the year.

The newly signed agreement with B.C. lays out a commitment to spend $80 million, split evenly between the federal and provincial governments, to get more than 37 million more trees in the ground, focused primarily on wildfire-impacted areas.

The deal is one of six similar multi-year agreements the federal government has recently signed with provinces and territories, according to a release from Natural Resources Canada.

“The hard work of developing these agreements is a testament to the complexity of tree planting and the painstaking efforts needed to ensure the tree planting is done right and done well,” Wilkinson said.

Natural Resources Canada’s yearly planting goal will ramp up as the 2030 deadline approaches. Last year, the department set out to put 30 million seedlings in the ground, in partnership with organizations and projects vetted by an expert panel, and achieved about 97 per cent of that goal.

According to the government’s website, as of March 2023, the program has either signed or is in the process of negotiating agreements to plant about 260 million trees over the next decade.

Wilkinson said he’s “confident” the federal government can stay on track to meet its two-billion-tree goal.

“There is no greater ally in our fight against climate change than our forests,” Wilkinson said.

Wilkinson is expected to give another update on the federal government’s tree-planting goal later in the summer near the end of the season.