Frances Allard, President and Co-Founder, Ramo at the Willow Landfill in Quebec. Matthew McClearne/The Globe and Mail
Standing atop an old dump, Francis Allard is in his element.
Mr Allard co-founded Ramo, whose business is planting willows and poplars to help remediate landfills, mines and marginal land. At the Ste-Sophie landfill north of Montreal, the company grows willows to treat leachate from areas of the facility closed decades ago. Ramo harvests the trees every few years, weaving them into a variety of products, including fences and noise barriers. He also established a plantation in northern Quebec to supply soil additives for reclamation at nearby mines.
But Mr Allard’s mood is darkening at Ramo’s new $7 million nursery nearby. Half of it was paid for using funding from the federal government’s 2 Billion Trees (2BT for short) program. An early believer in the program, Mr. Allard increased Ramo’s capacity to meet the expected increase in demand.
He is grateful for the support. But he’s nervously awaiting Ottawa’s response on the 2023 planting projects Ramo proposed in February. The clock is ticking: In order to properly prepare the plantings, he says, he will need an answer by the end of summer at the latest.
“We’ve had some funding to do some projects, but not at the level we expected,” Mr Allard said.
Although off to a slow start, 2BT is ambitious. Over a decade, the federal government aims to spend more than $3 billion to encourage provinces, territories, local groups, not-for-profit organizations, landowners and others to create new forests. They will cover 1.1 million hectares, an area twice the size of Prince Edward Island.
The government intends to rely heavily on these trees to help reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, and estimates that they will emit 12 megatonnes per year by mid-century. An internal document obtained through the Access to Information Act states that “there is no path to net zero emissions that does not include our forests”.
According to Natural Resources Canada, which administers 2BT, more than 500 million seedlings are planted annually. From 2026 to 2030, the program aims to plant another 300 million per year. The whole supply chain has to take this on: seed collectors, tree nurseries and boots on the ground to plant them. Enough landowners must also agree to convert large tracts of land into permanent forest.
“We can expand our overall capacity,” said Rob Keane, CEO of Forests Ontario, which has planted tens of millions of trees. “But what we need is that long-term, sustainable funding to know that the investment will have a return.”
Tree planting in Middlesex County.
Landfill willows: Probably not what most people envisioned when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced 2BT in 2019. Indeed, the program has taken heat for funding shrubs that look nothing like pines or oaks. But such majestic trees take years to grow several feet, while willows can grow that tall in a matter of months. And they can be planted much more densely than most species, up to 16,000 per hectare.
“We’re probably the only type of project that’s ready to go,” Mr Allard said.
2BT was heavily criticized for planting only 29 million trees in its first season. Victoria-based PRT Growing Services Ltd. is a large supplier of seedlings: it can grow 330 million seedlings annually in North America. CEO Randy Fournier said many of his customers are eager to take advantage of 2BT. But right now it’s “almost invisible even on the radar.”
The largest 2BT contribution announced to date – $32 million – went to Quebec’s forestry ministry. Spokesman Sylvain Carrier said the money (the final amount is expected to be $26 million) went to plant seven million plants in public forests (mostly in areas burned by wildfires) and another five million on private lands (mostly of which are ravaged by insect infestations).
The city of Montreal has been awarded more than $5 million to plant hundreds of thousands of trees to reduce its vulnerability to heat waves and deal with the devastation of the emerald ash borer, which has killed tens of thousands of its ash trees. Meanwhile, the British Columbia government received nearly $3 million.
Sources interviewed by The Globe and Mail are divided on how quickly Canada’s supply chain can respond. PRT’s Mr Fournier said his company could not deliver 100,000 spruce seedlings tomorrow but could grow mass quantities in just 12 months.
“As 2BT deployment gathers pace, there is absolutely no reason for the seedling supply chain to show any ill effects,” he said. “The capacity is absolutely there.”
But not all planting applications can use saplings grown on such short schedules. At the opposite extreme are mature trees used in urban settings: Michael Rosen, a consultant and former president of Tree Canada, a nonprofit that plans in urban areas, said city forestry departments require specimens up to a dozen years old.
“It takes a long time to grow a tree to that size,” he said. “The program, I think he only has 10 years to live. So it’s a real conundrum.”
Daimen Hardie, executive director of Community Forests International, said 2BT would also represent a big change for seed collectors. If the program wants to plant sustainable forests, it will require a greater variety of species than forest companies use in their replanting, he said.
Hoping to spur investment throughout the supply chain, NRCan this year began accepting multi-year funding proposals. Anne-Hélène Mathey, NRCan executive director responsible for 2BT, said almost all successful applicants had proposed multi-year projects and almost all had been notified. (However, these have not yet been publicly announced as no formal agreements have been signed.)
“The feedback is that it’s a sensible approach, both from nurseries and recipients,” she said.
The hardest thing can be finding enough land. Canada is the second largest country in the world, but tree planting competes with other goals, such as agriculture and future municipal development.
The most obvious targets for 2BT are previously forested areas severely damaged by forest fire or insect infestation. But Ottawa also wants to expand urban forests. Mr. Rosen said many older neighborhoods may reach their maximum canopy, but newer neighborhoods and industrial parks have space to spare.
Ramo offers willow planting services. Matthew McClearn/The Globe and Mail
Community Forests International has restored more than 1,200 hectares of forests in Primorye, which are held in trust to ensure they remain forested forever.
“I think land availability is definitely going to be an issue,” Mr Hardy said. “It’s already a challenge for us.”
NRCan’s Ms. Mattei said NRCan chose not to require formal guarantees from participants to preserve the new forests because it believed legal agreements would severely limit the program’s appeal. The volume of applications received so far shows there is enough public, agricultural and urban land to support 2BT’s growth, she added.
“For now, I would say we have no cause for concern,” she said.
Planting trees is fast becoming a popular natural solution to climate change. In 2018, the New Zealand government announced plans to plant one billion trees by 2028. Australia followed suit the following year, aiming to plant one billion trees by 2030. Also in 2019, the United States introduced the Stewardship Act of the climate, which included plans to plant 4.1 billion trees by 2030. Ireland pledged to expand forests to nearly a fifth of the country by mid-century.
In this big numbers game, a few realities are worth keeping in mind. Years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that one billion hectares of additional forests would be needed to limit global warming to 1.5 C by 2050. The contribution of 2BT, if realized, would be one-tenth of 1 percent from this.
And while two PEIs are nothing to be sniffed at, according to the National Forest Inventory, Canada’s forests span nearly 3.5 million square kilometers. According to one estimate, these forests contain 318 billion trees. So if Ottawa planted two billion more, it would add just 0.6 per cent to that total.
Trays of willow cuttings in the new Ramo willow nursery building in Quebec. Matthew McClearne/The Globe and Mail
As these trees become established, more can be harvested or burned. According to the World Resources Institute, a global research organization, Canada lost 2.5 million hectares of forest last year alone. “The rate of loss is significantly higher than the rate of gain that would occur directly through this program,” said Will Anderson, WRI’s recovery project manager.
Boreal forests grow slowly, so there is a real risk that 2BT trees will not stand long enough to provide benefits. Other plants that compete with them for light may need to be removed. During droughts, saplings may even require individual watering to survive. Future owners can cut down the trees.
All this speaks of the need for monitoring and verification. Establishing initial site conditions, tracking survival rates and consistently measuring carbon sequestration requires careful consideration. But many international efforts to plant trees have failed here.
“The common thread we’re seeing, even today, with all the countries we work with is that they haven’t budgeted or planned for monitoring,” said Dow Martin, who manages landscape restoration mapping and monitoring at the World Resources Institute.
Ms Mattei said 2BT had earmarked funding for site monitoring once the program ended. “There are all kinds of technologies and techniques that exist these days, from remote sensing imagery to LiDAR, to ensure that — without deploying 3,000 government employees…
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