Thank you very much.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much.
I appreciate very much the opportunity to come and speak to this distinguished committee. I, too, hope that I have something of value to add to your valuable work, your great work.
I'm pleased that I'm speaking on the heels of those three presentations because they were all excellent. Especially pertinent to my message, I think, is what you've heard from Tree Canada.
The people I represent, Trees for Life, the Urban Tree Canopy Coalition, is made up of members who are all not-for-profit organizations dedicated to the planting, maintenance and celebration of our urban trees. One of our valuable members is Tree Canada, of course, so it's great to see them here at the table today.
What I want to say may shed a different light on the same subject. The subject, of course, is the value of our urban tree canopies, with the emphasis on “urban”. I want to put a finer point on a couple of points that were made, especially with regard to four things.
The first would be health and wellness. I think everyone in this room knows there are ecological benefits to a healthy urban tree canopy. Intuitively we know that. Now we have some facts to deal with. But in terms of health and wellness, we now have quantifiable evidence that cancer, diabetes, lung disease, ADHD in children, are all reduced, and in some cases minimized, when people live in the environment of a healthy urban tree canopy. The quantification comes from a compilation of studies, over 200 of them, including university papers, that were published by Trees Ontario. They can be found on their website if you wish to look for them. We now have evidence of things we thought were true for generations, and now we know they're true.
Another would be the economic benefits of a healthy urban tree canopy. The economic benefits are many. You heard about some from Dorothy. I want to put a finer point on the issue of tourism. I want you to imagine a city that you enjoy travelling to, other than your own city, whatever that might be, if you happen to live in a city or the city of Ottawa. Outside of those obvious examples, is there a city that you like to travel to from time to time? I want you to imagine that city and get a snapshot in your mind of that city and then strip it of its urban tree canopy. Strip the trees out of that postcard image in your mind, and what have you got? We know what you've got. You've got asphalt. You've got steel. You've got cement. You don't have a very beautiful city. You don't have a liveable city.
What we're here today to talk about and to emphasize is that when we have a healthy urban tree canopy, we have a liveable city. We have space that people want to migrate to and want to live in.
We know there are lots of economic benefits beyond tourism. In Ontario, for instance, there is over 100,000 permanent, full-time jobs in the area of horticulture in the private sector alone. You could add another 30,000 in the public sector. Many of them—not all, granted, but many of them—are directly associated with the urban tree canopy.
We also know that real estate values increase by over 30%. For example, Manhattan has the most expensive real estate in the world. There is a condominium project on the south side of Central Park overlooking a beautiful tree canopy. If you stripped the tree canopy out of there and, of course, the green space, I don't think you'd have the same kind of value at all, or desirability.
There are all kinds of economic reasons why the federal government really should be focusing some attention on helping the organizations that are currently committed to enhancing our urban tree canopy. That's the group I represent, the people who are already doing the work. We're not doing new work. We're merely organizing them so that together they can do more.
Another reason I think the federal government needs to focus on the urban tree canopy is the societal benefits of a healthy urban tree canopy. It's a fact that vehicular traffic on a well-treed street, a mature street, slows down. We also know that pedestrian traffic picks up. We know that kids come out of the houses and start playing out of doors—God forbid, maybe a little ball hockey. We know that there are all kinds of other societal benefits to having a healthy urban tree canopy.
Finally, I want to mention the ecological benefits, which Dorothy has already touched upon. We know about the sequestering of carbon. We know about the very efficient production of oxygen, more so by a tree than anything man has created. We know that toxins in rain water are filtered. There are all kinds of other ecological reasons we need to encourage, at every opportunity, the development and enhancement of our urban tree canopy.
In a city like Toronto, there is a 17% tree canopy. In the 1960s it was over 40%. It's been in steady decline ever since. In spite of the best efforts by some good people, it continues to decline. It's not just happening in Toronto; it's occurring in every urban centre across the country.
The emerald ash borer is going to affect 8.5% of the Toronto tree canopy. It's going to affect more than 20% of the Ottawa tree canopy. You should be thinking very hard about what you can do to contribute to the sustaining of our urban tree canopy where the ash is concerned. By the way, Dr. Sandy Smith, the dean of the faculty of forestry at the University of Toronto, has signed a document that says it costs less to save a mature ash than it does to cut it down and replace it. Think about that.
In conclusion, I merely want to say that the purpose of Trees for Life, the Urban Tree Canopy Coalition is to take this discussion that we have about urban infrastructure, which could include public education and police protection and fire protection and storm water sewer management and sanitary sewers, and elevate trees so that they're a part of that discussion, so that, as one councillor in Toronto said to me, “Trees are not a nice to have; they're a must have.” That's where we'd really like to go with this conversation.
Thank you.