Mr. Speaker, the Government of Canada is fully committed to delivering on its commitment to plant two billion trees over the next 10 years.

Natural Resources Canada is looking to engage those interested in growing Canada’s forests as a nature-based solution to support national climate change actions. The growing Canada’s forests program has recently launched two new processes, and expression of interest and a request for information, to identify the desire and capacity of organizations to plant trees across Canada over the coming years.

A future participants request for information launched recently to identify interested organizations and learn about their vision and capacity to implement or contribute to large-scale, single or multi-year tree-planting projects across Canada. This will help to determine the design of the growing Canada’s forests program, develop future processes to maximize program participation and strengthen collaboration.

Existing federal programs are already supporting tree planting, with approximately 150 million seedlings expected to be planted by 2022 through the low-carbon economy fund, working with provinces and territories, as well as trees planted through the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund, working with local communities. The Government of Canada also continues to support the Highway of Heroes tree campaign, which has planted more than 750,000 out of a planned two million trees in Ontario between Trenton and Toronto.

As part of its commitment to supporting Canada’s forests and forest sector, the Government of Canada took early action in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic by providing up to $30 million to support small and medium-sized forest sector firms, including tree-planting operations, and defray the costs associated with COVID-19 health and safety measures. This funding helped ensure a successful 2020 tree-planting season and the planting of an estimated 600 million trees, while protecting workers and communities.

Marc Serré

$545,711.00