Planting trees is essential to improving the quality of life in communities. Vibrant community canopies help fight climate change, provide shade thereby naturally reducing temperatures, mitigate flooding, increase biodiversity and support health and human wellbeing.
GMF’s Growing Canada’s Community Canopies (GCCC) is a $291M initiative that will support planting at least 1.2 million trees across the country. It funds planting the right type of trees in the right places so that communities of all sizes can grow, manage and protect their tree canopies.
About tree funding
GCCC funding addresses common barriers local governments and communities face when pursuing tree canopy expansion projects, including insufficient staff capacity, gaps in knowledge and financing.
GCCC supports:
- Tree planting funding: Ambitious and equitable new tree planting projects, supporting communities to grow, manage and protect their tree canopies.
- Funding available: until until October 15, 2024 (aiming for the Fall 2025 planting season).
- Strategic funding: Urban forest planning, research and operational support, growing the capacity of communities to define their canopy expansion goals and to strategically manage their community canopies.
- Funding available: starting Winter 2025
Urban forest support for communities of all sizes
GCCC was developed with small and medium-sized communities in mind. GMF has partnered with Tree Canada, an organization renowned for its urban forestry expertise, to support communities with project development and implementation.
Tree Canada’s urban forest coaches will work with funding applicants to provide support such as developing planting and maintenance strategies to ensure long-term survival based on predicted future climate conditions, creating preservation, protection, and maintenance practices and policies, and planning projects that foster tree equity.
Long-term benefits to local communities
The initiative is designed to encourage local climate action while providing equitable access to trees across communities, ensuring tree survivability, and creating more quality green jobs by 2031. By providing upskilling opportunities and addressing staff capacity gaps, GCCC will enable local governments and communities to increase their tree canopy ambitions.
Investments in planting trees will provide nature-based solutions to combat the impacts of climate change by helping to prevent flooding, providing erosion control, promoting biodiversity, and supporting human well-being by creating more green spaces, cooling temperatures in urban areas and reducing air pollution.
GCCC is funded through the Government of Canada’s 2 Billion Trees program and is a further expansion of GMF’s mandate to focus on nature-based climate solutions.
The Green Municipal Funds’ Growing Canada’s Community Canopies is a $291 million initiative, ending in 2031, funded by the Government of Canada and delivered by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Capacity building is enabled through a partnership with Tree Canada.