Evidence of meeting #48 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was infrastructure.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
Bernard Trottier Conservative Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
Yes, absolutely.
Maybe Tree Canada has some thoughts on that. Again, I'm soliciting as an amateur urban landscaper—
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
Bernard Trottier Conservative Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
—and time has expired. Maybe next time around we can get some answers.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
You've all mentioned funding. Are you able to provide to this committee specific recommendations that you would like to see in an urban conservation strategy?
5:20 p.m.
Chair, Trees For Life, Urban Tree Coalition
I sometimes call this the elephant in the room. We spend very little time talking about private donors—private foundations, private individuals, corporations. They are very enthusiastic about what all of us represent here this afternoon.
I call this the miracle of matching funds. The federal government could come to the table and say, “Here's a buck to plant another tree, but we would like to see four more bucks. If we put one in, could you get us four more?” I think Trees for Life, as a coalition, would be delighted by that challenge and would go out and find four more bucks, so that your buck would represent five bucks. Then instead of planting 100,000, we'd be planting 500,000, or instead of a million, five million.
We'd have the private donor looking at this and saying, “You've brought the municipality to the table. You've brought not-for-profits to the table. You've brought the province to the table. You've brought the feds to the table. I'm coming to the table.”
I have a file that represented about $750,000 in private donations. Foundations have said they'd like to support what we're doing, doubling the tree canopy, but they don't want to do it alone. When you have money that you're prepared to invest as representatives of the federal government, you probably have the same attitude as private donors in the same situation. Nobody wants to do it all.
5:20 p.m.
President, Tree Canada
Believe it or not, in this case I look to our friends to the south. I look to the United States Forest Service. The United States has a forest service, as do we, the Canadian Forest Service.
The forest service in the U.S. treats urban forests no differently from any other sector in their forest code. They have three pillars. One is funding, and funding for community groups such as Trees for Life, Tree Canada, all the groups across Canada. The second pillar is science, having their scientists focus their work on the science of the urban forest. The third one is policies. In the United States, they fund and have policies directed at the state level.
If there's one thing the federal government could do, it would be to work with the provincial partners. In the United States, they have a state forester responsible for urban forests.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
You mentioned working with the provincial partners. Is that their recommendation?
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
I have a feeling that Mr. Manderson wanted to get in there.
5:20 p.m.
Natural Area Management Lead, Parks, City of Calgary
I'll just pick up on some—
5:20 p.m.
Natural Area Management Lead, Parks, City of Calgary
With respect to recommendations, there needs to be consistency and cohesiveness with respect to crediting incentives, infrastructure grants, and things that deal with compensation. The City of Calgary has its own compensation for wetland loss. It is about five times the provincial rate in terms of the cost for loss. That's been a tremendous tool that we're going to be able to use to start to replace wetland habitat.
We need cohesiveness between what I'm doing at the municipal level and what we're doing with respect to our provincial partners, where the water authority lies. I'd like to see cohesiveness, for example, between what we're doing with fisheries in Alberta and broader things like species at risk. There could be a real opportunity to consider some sort of scheme for stewardship crediting and compensation.
5:25 p.m.
Natural Area Management Lead, Parks, City of Calgary
This is just coming out of my head right now.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
Okay. If you want to table it later and send your recommendations—
5:25 p.m.
Natural Area Management Lead, Parks, City of Calgary
We would be happy to.
5:25 p.m.
Natural Area Management Lead, Parks, City of Calgary
That would certainly be something that would bear some thought.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
We'd like to hear your recommendations.
Mr. Manderson, you talked about the fact that climate change is going to have a huge impact in our cities. As we think about this urban conservation strategy, what would you suggest? As a recommendation, what would you like us to be thinking about?
5:25 p.m.
Natural Area Management Lead, Parks, City of Calgary
We need to understand how if affects cities.
