Getting to the root of city’s tree debates
Big number: 14, the number of tree removal permit items considered by Toronto council so far in 2020. The trees have an 8-4-2 record. Eight decisions went in favour of keeping the trees, four went for removal, two decisions were delayed.
Things got prickly at the July meeting of Toronto council. It started when Coun. James Pasternak demanded an apology after Coun. Gord Perks used the word “foolhardy” in a speech. “For Councillor Perks to call people who don’t agree with him ‘foolhardy’ is totally inappropriate,” Pasternak said. Coun. Frances Nunziata, who serves as council’s speaker, echoed Pasternak’s request for an apology.
But Perks chose to stick to his point. “Councillor, as much as I have been tempted on occasion to call you foolhardy, I did not. I said, ‘If you are foolhardy enough to believe this.’ ” He added that he wouldn’t apologize for “citing science.”
That branched into a linguistic digression on whether describing someone’s belief as foolhardy is the same as calling someone a fool. Neither side backed down.
The roots of all this friction? You’ll never guess. It was a debate about whether council should grant a permit to remove two spruce trees in front of a property on Kane Avenue in the Silverthorn neighbourhood. It wasn’t the first time a council debate about trees got tense. So far in 2020, council has considered 14 tree removal permits on both private and public property, many of them concluding with razor-thin votes.
I’m getting ahead of myself, though. You’re probably thinking something like, “Hey, wait, why is the government of
Canada’s largest city spending so much time, in the middle of a pandemic, squabbling about individual trees?”
That’s a darn good question. Because, yes, this is all very absurd. But there are things you need to know about why this happens.
First, trees matter. More than just providing some nice shade during hot summers, trees provide quantifiable benefits. City hall’s urban forestry division says Toronto’s 11.5 million trees generate $55 million in annual impacts, including $8.2 million in energy savings, $37.6 million in savings related to pollution removal and $4.8 million in savings by helping to absorb stormwater.
Recognizing this, Toronto council has a longstanding target of covering 40 per cent of Toronto with tree canopy, but getting there hasn’t been easy. According to the latest report on the state of Toronto’s trees, between 2008 and 2018, the canopy increased by an estimated 1.8 percentage points. These days, the city estimates the canopy at somewhere between 28.4 per cent and 31 per cent — still well short of the goal.
To make progress, not only does city hall need to step up their tree planting efforts, they also need to protect the trees that already exist, even if homeowners would like them out of the way. (About 60 per cent of Toronto’s trees are on private property.)
That’s the basis for the city’s permit process for tree removal. Letting homeowners go wild with an axe —in their yards and on adjacent city-owned boulevards — would have negative implications for everybody, so city hall requires that urban forestry staff inspect trees cited for removal. If trees are deemed healthy, a permit to remove will generally not be granted. Property owners can appeal a denied permit, however, which is what triggers the council debates.
Few councillors celebrate this process, but changing it could prove more contentious than the already contentious debates over the permits.
Some, like conservativeminded Coun. Stephen Holyday, tend to support granting permits for removal of trees on private property. In January, he tried (and failed) to convince councillors to support a motion that would have looked at loosening the rules for removing private trees, so long as homeowners took responsibility for planting additional replacement trees.
Other councillors have argued that the matter should be left entirely in the hands of the tree experts at city hall, leaving politicians out of it.
But until council votes for a new policy, the absurdity of council’s tree debates will continue, and often not to the benefit of the tree canopy.
The two spruces at the centre of the Perks-Pasternak argument? A property owner wanted to remove them to make way for a driveway. Despite Perks’s point that it would be foolhardy to believe any new trees planted to replace these mature trees would provide the same benefit, his motion to deny the removal permit lost on a 7-15 vote.
Two more trees gone, cut down by an absurd process.