OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government will be ending a program to plant two billion trees as part of its whole-of-government spending review to find billions of dollars worth of savings.
A senior government official confirmed that the budget to be presented on Tuesday will bring an end to the program, which
was launched under former prime minister Justin Trudeau
.
The official confirmed the government’s existing contracts would be honoured. In August, Natural Resources Canada said the contracts already signed would see nearly 1 billion trees planted.
Specifically, the department said that as of June, 988 million trees had been committed to be planted through various agreements with provinces, cities, First Nations, as well as other Indigenous and environmental organizations.
Ending the two-billion-tree program will be one of the measures set to be detailed when the government presents the results of what it has called its “Comprehensive Expenditure Review,” which
Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne initiated earlier this year.
It asked government departments to find 15 per cent worth of savings over the next three years.
The Globe and Mail was the first to report that the program would be ending.
Reining in government spending was something Carney had promised during the April federal election campaign. He seeks to inject billions more into defence spending and provide relief to sectors hardest hit by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, as well as spur more private sector investment, particularly in major infrastructure projects, in an effort to boost Canada’s economy in the midst of a trade war.
The cancellation of the tree-planting program also comes as Carney is set to unveil a new “climate competitiveness strategy,” which he outlined in
a recent public speech at the University of Ottawa
, saying it would “focus on results over objectives.”
Carney’s government has so far not voiced a commitment to reach Canada’s emission-reduction targets for 2030 and 2035, which would see the country reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by
40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels, and by 45 to 50 per cent below the same level, respectively.
His government has maintained that it intends to keep its goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.
During the recent federal election campaign, Carney campaigned on strengthening the government’s industrial carbon pricing system, known as its output-based pricing system, which is expected to feature prominently in his upcoming climate competitiveness strategy.
The Canadian Climate Institute, a think-tank which has studied the goverment’s efforts,
released a report in September
saying that reaching the country’s 2030 target was no longer achievable, citing a delay and rolling back of both federal and provincial policies, combined with plans to expand the production of liquified natural gas and continued oil and gas production.
In 2024, the federal
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development warned that the government’s efforts were insufficient to meet its 2030 target.
The commissioner had, in an audit in 2023, also flagged concerns about the delays to the rollout of the two-billion-tree planting program and pointed out that it was not likely to lead to a reduction in emissions.
Planting two billion trees over 10 years was a more than $3-billion commitment Trudeau had made during the 2019 federal election campaign as one of the nature-based approaches within the larger Liberal climate plan.
The Opposition Conservatives have for years criticized the Liberals’ progress on that commitment. The program was formally launched in 2021 and by late 2024 had reported planting approximately 160 million trees.
National Post
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