It is nice to see a program that has such a long-term horizon, because sometimes in government we tend to focus too much on “short-termism”. This is a theme in lesson number 8 of our climate lessons learned report of 2021, which we were here before this committee for about two years ago.
I don't want to discourage departments from taking on long-term projects, even if it takes a while to see the fruits of their labour. That's why we put in exhibit 1.4, which says don't look just at 2030 and see that it's a carbon source; look all the way out to 2040, 2050 or 2060 to see the fruits of the labour accruing in that period.
It is worthwhile to do. It should be an incremental tree program that isn't counting trees that are going to be planted anyway, as we've just heard. There's some question as to whether that includes the low carbon economy fund trees or not. The department has chosen to include those now, as of this summer. We didn't have an indication about that when we issued the report. There will obviously be fewer benefits if it's not entirely a tree-planting program but a tree-planting and tree-counting program. We can talk about that more later.
Definitely it is worthwhile to invest in the long term by planting trees.