Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Duguay. I'm very pleased to be here with you. My name is Mike Rosen. I'm the president of Tree Canada. I'm also a registered professional forester in Ontario, so I have some background knowledge. I've worked for 35 years in forestry, one way or the other.

Environment committee  I'd like to put it in this perspective. When we were invited to appear before this committee, your sentiment about a make-work project did not occur to me. What I thought immediately was, “Wow. This is great news. This is wonderful news. Thank God this level of government is taking an interest in urban Canada.”

Environment committee  Believe it or not, in this case I look to our friends to the south. I look to the United States Forest Service. The United States has a forest service, as do we, the Canadian Forest Service. The forest service in the U.S. treats urban forests no differently from any other sector in their forest code.

Environment committee  That's my recommendation.

Environment committee  Alaska has an urban forester, funded federally.

Environment committee  When it comes to best practices that you could have in a municipality, I'm not going to name the municipalities. I don't want to get into that. You have to think of the bigger picture. Some municipalities actually have an urban forest strategy. In my mind, every city should have one.

Environment committee  I want to address that one. Actually it has to do with a question from Mr. Choquette. He mentioned the same principle because the trend now, of course, is all toward densification. Mr. Choquette was talking about urban areas expanding into rural areas and what we can do. The trend in municipalities is toward densification, to develop more in the cities themselves.

Environment committee  Can I add one thing?

Environment committee  This is going to be as specific as I can make it. There's one thing this committee could do that would help the urban forest. It would be to give firm direction to the Canadian Forest Service to allocate one position in each of their forestry centres—they have one in Edmonton, one in Sault St Marie, one in Sainte Foy, one in Fredericton—to work on the problems in the urban forest.

Environment committee  An urban forest strategy, in fact, aligns with best management practices, so it's a Canadian version of what the challenges and possible solutions are to improving our urban forest, making sure they're not going into decline, as Mark has discussed. It has to do with things like how to promote good inventories of trees, what the best management practices to maintaining trees are, and what communities need for educational things to encourage individuals to protect trees.

Environment committee  The only comment I'd like to add is that it really does start at the top. I think the government's policies and direction are very important to municipalities. At present, you have the infrastructure in place. There is Natural Resources Canada. There is the Canadian Forest Service.

Environment committee  That is a good question, even though it is a bit complicated. Historically, our mission has been to plant trees. Our programs, basically, are geared towards tree planting. In the 1990s, in particular, we started to plant many trees in urban areas. As you noted, the conservation of existing forests is very important.

Environment committee  I just have one piece for the conclusion. Is that okay?

Environment committee  It's 30 seconds.

Environment committee  Thank you. Thank you, Dorothy. I appreciated that. I want to reiterate the importance of urban conservation, especially the benefits of an urban forest strategy. If you want to think of a role for the federal government, I will tell you that municipalities are eagerly awaiting leadership from their federal and provincial counterparts.