Ontario budget cuts will chop thousands of planned tree plantings in Hamilton

Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government called the 50 Million Trees program frivolous spending.

Thespec.com
April 29, 2019
Matthew Van Dongen

A cancelled provincial tree-planting program will axe tens of thousands of planned plantings in Hamilton and the surrounding area this year.

The Progressive Conservative government has chopped the $4.6-million 50 Million Trees program, labelling it an example of "frivolously" spent taxpayer dollars. The news comes shortly after conservation authorities learned their annual provincial flood protection budgets are also being cut in half.

The program, celebrated as a tool to fight climate change, poor air quality and erosion, has planted more than 27 million trees, said Forests Ontario head Rob Keen -- including hundreds of thousands in Hamilton and Halton.

The City of Hamilton has used the program to plant nearly 20,000 trees over the last three years alone, said forestry head Sam Scarlett. Typically, the seedlings are planted in city-owned "passive natural areas," most recently in parts of Turner Park on the Mountain and Joe Sam's Leisure Park in Waterdown.

"We had planned to do another 4,500 this year, but obviously that won't happen now," Scarlett said.

Conservation Halton said it co-ordinates an average of 65,000 plantings each year through the 50 Million Trees initiative and helped 11 private landowners in Burlington, Milton and Hamilton access program cash last year.

Other local agencies like the Hamilton Conservation Authority and the Royal Botanical Gardens periodically made use of the program, too.

Hamilton will continue with its own street tree planting efforts, including replacement for trees killed by the invasive Emerald Ash Borer, Scarlett emphasized.

But he said the provincial funding "will be missed." For example, the city planted 11,900 seedlings, saplings or small trees in 2017 -- and more than a third of those plantings were provincially funded baby trees.

It seems like "particularly poor timing" to start hacking tree-planting and flood management cash, said frustrated Environment Hamilton head Lynda Lukasik, pointing to yet another year of widespread flooding across the province.
"It is such a low-cost way to leverage public dollars to make the air cleaner, mitigate the impacts of climate change, better manage our storm water. Now is really not the time to stop supporting that," she said.

The new provincial government does not see it that way, however.

Ministry of Natural Resources spokesperson Justine Lewkowicz called the program "a perfect example of the previous Liberal government frivolously spending taxpayer dollars," arguing the private sector forestry industry already plants 68 million trees a year.