Justin Trudeau

The federal government did not meet the targets for its program to plant two billion trees during the program’s third planting season. Numbers provided by Natural Resources Canada show Ottawa did not meet its annual planting and spending targets for the 2023-24 growing season. Ottawa and its partners were supposed to plant 60 million trees last season but only got 46.6 million saplings in the ground. Despite the program’s slow rollout, a spokesperson for Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson’s office insisted it will still reach its 2030-31 target. …The federal government says it has gotten 157.6 million trees in the ground since planting began in 2021. …Jerry DeMarco, federal commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, has called the addition of trees planted under separate programs “creative accounting.” …The government now has only seven growing seasons left to plant more than 1.8 billion trees.