Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to work with my colleague at the natural resources committee.
I would certainly beg to differ with the conclusions of my colleague that planting two billion trees will not help the environment. Our goal is to be at net-zero emissions by 2050, so the fact that the member is stating that we should not even start is absurd, given that we need to start somewhere. This is engaging communities, families and the provinces to get this done.
I must say that in my region of Sudbury, where the landscape was devastated 40 years ago, we have planted 14 million trees over the past 30 years, which has done much for our community. The member says that wanting to plant trees is virtuous and is virtue signalling. Again, I bet to differ.
On another note that my colleague raised, with respect to the PBO, if he reads the report, he will see that the PBO says that basically it is hard to make these estimates and that they might be off, but that this is the basic estimate. That said, a lot of organizations across Canada have reached out to me and said that the PBO report, in its calculations, is quite wrong. The calculations are based on Ontario at the cost of three dollars per tree to be planted, whereas most of the ones I have heard about cost less than a dollar a tree to be planted.
Let us stick with the facts. This program is good for Canada, it is good for families and it is good for everyone.