LILLEY: Tree planting claims from NDP, Liberals aren’t based on reality


The numbers don’t add up for either party when it comes to how many trees would need to be planted to meet their targets.

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Election promises should be examined carefully, from all parties, not just believed because they sound good.

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The recent Earth Day promises of the NDP and Liberals were simply reported without being questioned, which they really should be given the claims were made by the parties with few details on how they would accomplish their goals.

In their attempt to win the June 2 Ontario election, the NDP and Liberals tried to outbid each other on how many trees they would plant. Steven Del Duca’s Liberals were first out of the gate on Earth Day with a promise of 800 million trees over 8 years shortly followed thereafter by Andrea Horwath saying her party de ella would plant 1 billion trees by 2030 ifelected.

It’s hard to be against trees, and I’m not, but these promises simply aren’t based on reality. These are aspirational promises from both parties, not something either of them could actually achieve.

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What do I base that bold claim on?

The numbers don’t add up for either party when it comes to how many trees would need to be planted to meet their targets. There are also historical records for previous promises from the Ontario and federal Liberals when it comes to tree planting.

Let’s start with the obvious: We aren’t short on trees in Ontario, the place is literally covered with them. Drive through Northern Ontario and you will wonder what we have other than trees. Wander the Ottawa Valley outside of the nation’s capital and it’s non-stop trees, or even fly over Toronto and you will be amazed at how many trees cover the biggest city in the country.

“Ontario has 70.4 million hectares of forest which is 4.8 hectares of forest for every Ontarian. This represents about 2% of the world’s forests and 20% of Canada’s forests,” the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources states.

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Nearly 66% of Ontario’s 107.6 million hectares of land is already covered by forests, the rest is either northern land where we can’t grow trees, farms where we grow food, or places where we live in our homes, condos and apartments. While suburban sprawl is portrayed as the biggest reason for losing our forests, in Southern Ontario, agriculture was the biggest culprit between 2008 and 2018 while insect infestation was the biggest issue in Northern Ontario.

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Using the fear that we’re paving paradise and putting up a parking lot, Ontario’s New Democrat and Liberal parties are promising to put more trees into the ground.

The Liberals have promised 100 million trees for 8 years, but the NDP is promising 1 billion by 2030 which means they will have about seven years after forming government to meet the promise, meaning 142,857,142 trees per year.

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This would require planting 391,389 trees per day for the NDP plan to work and 273,972 trees per day for the Liberal plan. In 2008, the McGuinty government promised to plant 50 million trees by 2020 but the program was canceled in 2018 by the Ford government for costing too much and not meeting targets.

They had planted just 24 million trees in 10 years or 6,575 trees per day and the private sector was already planting more trees at a much lower cost.

Then Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna holds a sapling during a funding announcement to support Forests Ontario in planting 50 million trees by 2025, on World Environment Day at the Dominion Arboretum in Ottawa on Wednesday, June 5, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Justin Tang
Then Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna holds a sapling during a funding announcement to support Forests Ontario in planting 50 million trees by 2025, on World Environment Day at the Dominion Arboretum in Ottawa on Wednesday, June 5, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Justin Tang

In 2019, the Trudeau Liberals promised to plant two billion trees across Canada by 2030 but by last November had planted just 8.5 million, of which 7.6 million were in British Columbia and just 89,000 trees had been planted in Ontario.

These Earth Day proclamations sound good, they make for good headlines, but like all political announcements, they should be analyzed to see if they are true or even feasible. Sadly, as long as politicians, especially the NDP or Liberal ones, promise to do something good for the environment, there is very little questioning, fact checking or analysis happening and instead their promise is simply repeated.

These promises are attempts by both parties to show they care about the environment while doing little to actually improve the environment.

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