Mr. Speaker, I originally asked the minister about the government's promise to plant two billion trees to combat climate change, and I know there have been a lot of concerns about that program, including the fact that no trees were planted in the first year and whether the trees planted would be in addition to those that would seed themselves. I agree that nature-based solutions will have to play an important role in our efforts to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and trees are a logical place to start.
There have been some high profile contests, for example those sponsored by Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance and by Elon Musk, to find ways to remove carbon dioxide from the air and put it to good use. While those contests may highlight important new innovations, the organizers could just as easily have saved their time and given the millions of dollars in prize money to trees.
On the face of it, planting trees is a great idea, but we have to have a plan to make sure we are not duplicating the efforts that nature would provide and the efforts industry is obliged to provide after harvest. To truly bring down our carbon emissions through tree planting, those efforts have to be additive. We have to plant the trees in the right places, where they can grow quickly but where they would not be planted without our efforts. We have to plant the right species of trees to match not just the present environmental conditions, but projected future conditions after climate change.
Most of all, we must remind ourselves, and all Canadians, that simply planting trees is not a magic bullet to fix climate change. For one thing, there is a 20- to 30-year delay in positive carbon sequestration when we plant trees in new forests. We are now at over 700 megatonnes of carbon dioxide in emissions. We need to get to zero in 30 years. Calculations show that even if we did everything right, our new trees would not make a significant impact until after 2050, and even if we did everything right our two billion trees would only be sequestering about four or five megatonnes of carbon, according to expert testimony we heard at the natural resources committee.
It is a small step. It is an important small step, perhaps, but certainly not a big part of any climate action plan. It may help us after 2050, but we should not point to this as one of the actions that will help us meet that “zero by 2050” target. If we want to spend money wisely with nature-based solutions, let us invest it into finding the best land management practices that will yield the best results for climate action, and promote those through co-operation with the provinces that manage our forests.