Thank you, Mr. Chair and distinguished colleagues.
As well, welcome, Minister. Thank you very much. I understand that you take these hearings very seriously. I appreciate that you're here, and I'm glad that I get a chance to ask you some questions. I'm going to get right into it.
In the 2019 election, your party, your government, pledged to plant two billion trees as part of its $3-billion effort to deploy natural climate solutions. At the committee I'm on, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Natural Resources, department officials and others indicated that there were no plans at that point in time, a year later, to actually facilitate that. As a matter of fact, after delving into it somewhat, we found out that they didn't know how they would do that, where they would do that, when they would do that or even, after much probing, why they would do that.
You may not be aware, but the forest industry itself plants about 600 million trees a year—three for every tree it cuts down—so about 400 million, if you say are going to be planted.... Your government's plan doesn't seem to be more than five years' worth of that. It's going to do this over 10 years.
Our forest stock in Canada is about 380 billion trees. Your plan for natural environmental solutions amounts to one half of one per cent of our carbon storage through trees over the next 10 years. As a further fact, most of these trees don't start absorbing significant carbon until they're at least 10 years old, so you're not accomplishing anything by 2030.
Can you square this for any of us, please, about how this contributes to our country's decarbonization efforts?