“While across Southern Ontario there is still around 26 per cent forest cover in some watersheds, in others, forest cover is still as low as the five percent that triggered flooding disasters in the past.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks to reporters while inspecting flood damage in Constance Bay, near Ottawa.
Reforestation and conservation cuts will only increase flooding and other environmental problems in an age when these problems are being amplified by climate change. We need to learn from past environmental mistakes if we wish to avoid repeating them.
On April 25, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced two cuts to programs that were helping to prevent environmental problems such as flooding that are becoming even more acute with the onset of climate change
Ford axed the Fifty Million Tree Program that was started in 2008. This reforestation program was about half way through its target and cost $4.7 million annually. He also announced that provincial funding for Conservation Authorities, now a meagre $7.4 million a year, would be cut in half. These programs designed to promote reforestation are helping to control flood risks, risks made worse by climate change impacts because climate change is causing increasing precipitation in Southern Ontario in the winter and spring periods. Such programs, which help reduce flooding risks, are needed more than ever before because the forests, many of which are wooded wetlands, help soak up the increased rain and snow melt
Ford’s $12.1 million cuts for trees and flood control is especially galling in view of the small amounts of money involved in comparison with the catastrophic damage to the province that will ensue as a result of the effects of climate change and deforestation going unaddressed.
The cuts also illustrate historical amnesia, a failure to remember why these programs were developed in the first place. MORE
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