Plan to increase Winnipeg tree canopy, protect trees on private property moves ahead at city hall

A strategy to expand Winnipeg's tree canopy over the coming decades passed its first hurdle at city hall — along with a new push to protect trees on private property.

City council's community services committee voted unanimously Monday in favour of an urban forest strategy that calls for the city to hire more than 40 new staff and spend millions more every year in order to plant and prune more trees. 

The strategy, which now moves on to executive policy committee and city council as a whole, aims to see Winnipeg's tree canopy cover a quarter of the city by 2065.

The strategy also calls on the city to reduce the time between pruning cycles from the current pace of once every 31 years. The goal is to bring that cycle down to once every 12 years for trees in parks, and once every seven years for trees alongside streets.

To reach that goal, the city needs to plant 17,000 trees every year, according to a report that came before community services committee.

Advocates who addressed the committee Monday praised Winnipeg adopting the strategy, although they said some of the targets in that document may fall short of the need.

Christian Cassidy, executive director of non-profit advocacy group Trees Winnipeg, noted Winnipeg lost more trees than it planted between 2013 and 2020, leading to a what he called a deficit of approximately 14,500 trees during that timeframe.

Planting one new tree for every one lost by the city won't make up for that deficit, Cassidy said.

"What that means is, if we have particularly difficult years ahead — drought years or a uptick in disease — we probably won't even reach the 1:1 target if more trees are lost than what we think," Cassidy told the committee.

The plan would add the equivalent of 42 full-time employees to the city's payroll at an annual cost of $2.8 million. It also calls for $60 million in capital spending between 2024 and 2029.

Councillor eyes power to protect trees on private land

Cassidy also urged the committee to consider ways to pass a bylaw that would protect healthy trees not on public land. 

Later in the meeting, Committee chair Evan Duncan (Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood) moved a motion to see whether provincial legislation can be amended to grant the city the power to do just that, citing the power to protect trees on private land in Ontario.

Duncan said he expects some opposition to this idea.

"There will definitely be some work to be done with the developers, but at the end of the day, we as council and we as Manitobans can't say that trees are important to us and then have nothing in place to protect them from just being cut down, without any questions asked," he said.