Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 15th, 2024

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Excuse me for interrupting, but I don't have much time left.

As my colleague pointed out, certain species are being emphasized because of the price. In the planning, the goal was $1.70 per tree. I don't know if the plan had been to plant a wider range of trees to make the forest more resilient, but I've noticed that there are major price disparities. In Brampton, Ontario, it's $160 per tree, whereas it's $1 in Greater Sudbury. Can you tell me why?

[Monique Frison]

The prices vary not necessarily on species but on how old the tree is, how long it has to grow in a nursery and how much the land needs to be prepared in advance. Yes, you can do a different species for that lower cost.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Do you think the expected average price per tree of $1.70 is still achievable or reasonable?

[Monique Frison]

It depends very much on the circumstances and on what will be planted and where. If it's a place where you have to do a lot of work to prepare the land to take in a tree, that will be more expensive. In terms of the $1.70, for some of the projects our contribution is still around a dollar or two dollars per tree.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Desjarlais, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I want to turn to the double counting. It is a concern to me to know we have a situation where that is possible. I understand from reading the report that there are some issues related to methodology and frameworks not existing.

Commissioner DeMarco, how is it that you received that information? What did you find in the process of reviewing the counting of the trees and various other programs that do similar initiatives? How did you see that this mistake was possible?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

This emerged after the tabling of our report. In our report, at paragraphs 1.19 and 1.20, we noted where they were at in their tree-planting success in the first two years. That was reflected in the exhibit on the next page.

This is important, especially for this committee, the public accounts committee: Please note, on page 26 of our report, that we obtained from the entity, the department, “confirmation that all known information that has been requested, or that could affect the findings or audit conclusion, has been provided”, along with “confirmation that the audit report is factually accurate”. That's a very important step in the audit process. We were not told about these tens of millions of other trees.

Perhaps they didn't know the exact number, but it was incumbent upon the department to tell us that it was not 16.5 million that they were going to count for 2022 but tens of millions above that. It turns out that those tens of millions of additional trees were not from the two billion trees program. They were from the low carbon economy fund and had already been planted and funded under that program.

If you double count trees from other programs in other departments, that's not incremental. That's double counting. It's obvious that the benefits for biodiversity, carbon sequestration and human health are diminished if you count the same tree twice in two different programs.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Who's responsible for counting the trees?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

It's Natural Resources Canada.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Why didn't you make the commissioner aware?

That's for anyone.

[Michael Vandergrift]

The statistics for the counting of those trees were not available at the time of the audit period. It was only several months later that the number of trees planted was made available to us.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Why did you count the trees outside the program?

[Michael Vandergrift]

The program was designed to account for tree planting across government efforts as long as they were incremental and they could be sufficiently validated and counted.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Is that how you received the question?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much. I'm afraid that is time.

Mr. Caputo, you have the floor for four minutes.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

If Mr. Desjarlais wants an answer to his question, he can get an answer, and then I'll go.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Do you want to restate it, Mr. Desjarlais, just for clarity?

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

At what point did somebody ask a question, other than the commissioner, as to how many trees were planted? Is the question you were asked why you included the trees from the other program? Why did you include those trees at all?

[Michael Vandergrift]

The program was designed to include trees across government programs as long as they met the two conditions that Ms. Frison has spoken about. Those statistics were not available to us at the time of the audit period.

I will invite colleagues to add, if they wish.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I plan on directing my questions to Mr. DeMarco.

Thank you very much for your report. I am new to this committee; I don't normally sit here. Those who know me know I'm more of a justice person, to be candid. I'm reading this as somebody who's not on this committee, and to me it looks like the beginning of an unmitigated disaster, if I could put it that way, in that the government has pledged to plant two billion trees and we're nowhere near on track. Is that accurate?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

They weren't on track as of the date of our report. They consider themselves to be on track now that they're counting trees from another program.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

If we cheat, we're on track. Is that the government's position?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

Well, as I've said before, we said in our report that they're unlikely to meet their target unless significant changes are made. I was not hoping for changes in accounting. I was hoping for changes in the number of agreements and the number of actual incremental trees planted from the date of our report forward.

I should say that even if they didn't know the exact number—and we've heard about statistics from that other program—they should have alerted us by saying they intended to count tens of millions more trees from another program. Even if they didn't know the exact number, we should have been told that these trees were sitting in this very large back pocket of theirs from another program.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Then this is an F for execution, and an F triple minus for transparency. Do I have that right?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

I'm not in the business of giving grades, but I am disappointed that we were not told about that. An important part of the audit process is for us to be told about anything that could affect our findings, including this, which would affect not only exhibit 1.3 but exhibit 1.4 and several of the paragraphs about costs as well. We don't know if they're spending $3.2 billion on two billion trees or some lesser number of trees.