Thank you.
That's certainly something that we need to consider down the road, and it is something that I think in our next mandate we'll try to push forward because the value is there to do it.
Another big thing that has happened recently is the cut of the 50-million tree program in Ontario and the impact of that. Once again, with the flooding that we're seeing happen and the soil erosion that is happening, we don't need to be cutting tree plantings. We need to be increasing tree plantings. The Ford government, once again, doesn't seem to understand the reductions in emissions and the elimination of soil erosion that trees can provide in the conditions of climate change that we're dealing with. Under drier conditions, the retention of moisture in the soil helps our farmlands as well. All of these things are a valuable resource.
Rob Keen, the CEO of Forests Ontario, commented:
We need to realize that to have a healthy economy and a healthy society, we need healthy forests. To have healthy forests for our future, we need to plant more trees.
Here are some numbers from an article in Canada's National Observer:
To date, the 50 Million Tree Program has planted 27 million trees, or 15,000 hectares of new forest. On average, this means that every year the program has planted 2.5 million trees on approximately 4,000 properties.
According [to] the 2019 Environmental Commissioner report, average forest cover in southern Ontario stands [at] 26 per cent, with some areas seeing as low as five per cent of forest cover.
The report identified that 30 per cent of land needs to be planted with trees to restore the forest cover in southern Ontario to optimum levels. That equates to roughly 680,000 hectares.
Can you provide a viewpoint that here we're making significant investments in protected spaces in order to grow our forests and grow the ability to tackle climate change, from both an adaptation standpoint and a mitigation standpoint, through emissions reduction?