Environment Committee on Nov. 26th, 2012

Evidence of meeting #55 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 water.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

Urban Conservation Practices in Canada

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Marguerite Ceschi-Smith Vice-Chair, Standing Committee on Environmental Issues and Sustainable Development, Councillor, City of Brantford, Federation of Canadian Municipalities

Guy Garand Managing Director, Conseil régional de l'environnement de Laval

Marie-Christine Bellemare Project Officer, Conseil régional de l'environnement de Laval

Ken Dion Senior Project Manager, Watershed Management Division, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority

Jim Tovey Councillor, Ward 1, City of Mississauga, As an Individual

4:20 p.m.

Vice-Chair, Standing Committee on Environmental Issues and Sustainable Development, Councillor, City of Brantford, Federation of Canadian Municipalities

Marguerite Ceschi-Smith

You are talking about a plan that really worked well.

4:20 p.m.

NDP

François Pilon NDP Laval—Les Îles, QC

Yes or, if you prefer, a plan that did not work at all.

4:20 p.m.

Vice-Chair, Standing Committee on Environmental Issues and Sustainable Development, Councillor, City of Brantford, Federation of Canadian Municipalities

Marguerite Ceschi-Smith

Can I talk about the urban forest?

I am going to speak in English, if you don't mind. I can get by in French, but that's about it.

Just to let you know, I am a city councillor and I am on the board of directors of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. I think I forgot to say that when I began.

What I'd like to talk about is environmental issues within municipalities. I'll focus on the urban forest. It is extremely important for the kinds of benefits that trees have within an urban environment. They're green spaces. They're forests. They provide economic, environmental, social and health benefits to cities. Trees within a city are hugely important.

I will use the example of my city, the population of which is less than 100,000, about 95,000. We have a tree canopy that has fallen to below 20%. Our tree canopy now is probably about 15%. This is devastating for us as a city, as I said, because of the environment, the cooling and all the other benefits that trees bring. The emerald ash borer began to hit us about two or three years ago. We're now at the point that we're beginning to lose trees. In our city, where we have a canopy of about 15%, we're going to lose about 90,000 trees, 10,000 of which are on municipal property. The other 80,000 are in private hands.

To give you an example of what this means to our city, the loss of 90,000 ash trees would diminish our canopy by from 1.5% to 2%. We would then be at 13%, or maybe 12%.

The cost of this to our city is huge. This year we're just starting into the phase in of which trees are being hit and damaged. We have a 15-year strategic plan whereby we're going to try to work through this.

I'll go through this really quickly, but in 2013 we'll spend $60,000 just for treatment, $140,000 to take the trees down, and then an additional.... We'll spend about $265,000 next year just to deal with taking the trees down and planting some more.

Now, given the number of trees we have and how large this effort of replanting is going to be—when we replant, we would like to work towards that 40% canopy, which would be a 1:3 ratio—it's going to cost us $1.5 million in tree planting to deal with this impact.

An urban forest is very important to all cities and all communities across this country. I think it's important that we deal with it.

Thank you.