“Our nations are trying to take more control and have more say within the land that we occupy and where we come from,” she said. “We want to take care of it, because when we take care of the earth, the earth also takes care of us.”
A burned tree stump is seen near Devils Lake in Manitoba’s Interlake region, about 300 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg. (Jaison Empson/CBC)
According to the Canadian Tree Nursery Association (CTNA), the country is losing trees faster than nature can grow them or people can plant them.
Trees are chopped down for development, lumber and paper, and also increasingly consumed by species like the mountain pine beetle. But the CTNA also says nearly a tenth of Canada’s forests were destroyed by wildfires between 2023 and 2025, and that it would take 7.3 billion seedlings to replace just 15 per cent of that.
Mass-planting program cancelled
The CTNA has been working to replace trees through the 2 Billion Trees Program, the federal planting initiative announced by former prime minister Justin Trudeau during the 2019 election campaign. He later earmarked $3.2 billion over 10 years for the program.
But last fall, the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney cancelled it, as part of a federal budget aimed at cutting spending and instead investing in defence and infrastructure.