Natural Resources Committee on Dec. 4th, 2020

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Okay. Somewhere in the Canadian forest, if you were increasing the land here, tell me what you think—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Mr. McLean. That's all your time.

Mr. May, you are last on the docket today.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. How much time do I have? I know we're getting close to the two-hour mark.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

I'll give you your five minutes if you need it.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Okay, thank you very much.

First of all, I want to thank all of the witnesses.

One of the great things about going last is I get to do that, to thank everybody, but one of the bad things is that a lot of the questions I would have asked have already been asked and answered. It's a bit of a challenge.

I want to specifically thank CPAWS for being here. I'm not really sure that last line of questioning was appropriate. I nearly jumped in on you there, Greg, to ask the chair for relevance. I think you were right to point out that a lot of organizations, a lot of industries, receive funding from multiple sources, so I do apologize on behalf of the committee for that.

Actually, Greg stepped on one of my questions when he asked with regard to the types of trees and how we do this. It brought me back to my youth a bit. All through university, every spring before I'd start my summer job, I would plant urban trees for the City of London back at a time when this was actually run by a public utilities commission, so I'm aging myself a little bit. I know how difficult it is to plant some of these trees that are older, the 10-, 15-, or 20-year trees, whether you want to call them boulevard trees or decorative trees in urban settings. London had a really good reputation for doing this.

We have had a lot of questions about what types of trees are good. I think that there's been a lot of conversation about this, and I don't want to rehash that discussion, because it depends on where you're putting these trees and on what your goal is for these trees.

I would like to ask Tree Canada this. I'm a member of Parliament in a mostly urban riding. Specifically in an urban setting, what advice would you give us to set standards or try to advise either the provinces or in some cases the municipalities on how to proceed or how to develop an urban canopy program?

[Danielle St-Aubin]

I think this is Adrina's area of expertise.

[Dr. Adrina Bardekjian]

Sure. Thanks, Danielle.

I would say it depends on how you would like to go about starting and whether there are similar communities that are the same size and have similar considerations. There's an array of resources available. For example, at Tree Canada we have a compendium of best urban forest management practices. It includes a lot of different examples of existing urban forest management plans across the country.

We've also embarked on a study with the University of Toronto that maps Canada's urban forestry footprint. It includes communities that have urban forest management plans and tree protection policies.

Essentially I would say you'd start with really examining what you want for your urban forest, and then do a public consultation to see what the community wants for that space as well.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Who's doing a really good job at this right now? Who is the gold standard? Who should we look to as a community that has really got this together?

[Dr. Adrina Bardekjian]

That's a great question. We get asked that a lot.

There are a variety of Canadians who are doing a great job. Certainly you could look at larger communities like the city of Toronto, like Montreal, like Vancouver, but there's also Truro, Nova Scotia, as a smaller community, and Halifax as well. I think also of the town of Oakville here in Ontario. There are a lot of different communities doing great work. Whether something is good or sets a gold standard from an urban forest management perspective really depends on what the initial goal was that the community itself set.

I think that's really important to understand. There isn't a one-size-fits-all for urban forest management planning, because communities are different sizes and have different resources available to them, and they have different compositions of different cross-cultural interests as well, depending on the city.

I think all of those things come into great consideration when you think of developing an urban forest management plan that really works for your community and that's also sustainable moving forward.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

I can anticipate that the chair is about to cut me off.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

I was going to say that for somebody who didn't want to use all his time, you did a pretty darn good job of using it all.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

I didn't say I wasn't going to use it all; I just asked how long I had.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Well, you didn't sound like you wanted to use it all. In any event, I appreciate you being right on time, as I do with everybody.

As I think more than one person said today to our witnesses, we never seem to have enough time to follow up on some of the things we're discussing, but we are very grateful to all our witnesses for taking the time to be here today and providing us with a great deal of information to take home and think about as part of the study.

Thank you. Everybody, please enjoy your weekend, and I will see all the committee members early next week.

The meeting is adjourned.