Embattled Parliament Hill elm tree's fate sealed after last-minute Liberal vote kiboshes stay of execution
The rare elm has just days left, despite efforts by environmental groups and community associations to save it
Marie-Danielle Smith, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: April 2, 2019
OTTAWA — After hearing witness testimony at an emergency meeting of a House of Commons committee Tuesday, Liberal MPs — bolstered by the last-minute arrival of one of their members — struck down an opposition motion to delay the removal of a beloved elm tree on Parliament Hill.
While other House of Commons committees have been busy with ostensibly weightier matters, the Procedure and House Affairs Committee has been preoccupied with the fate of a centenarian American elm which stands just east of Centre Block in the middle of what has become a construction zone a construction zone. Now, despite pleadings from local environmental groups and community associations, it will be felled as soon as mid-April, as part of preparatory work for the decade-long project to renovate Parliament.
“We thought we were kind of close. We thought there would be an opportunity maybe to buy a little bit more time,” said Paul Johanis, chair of the Greenspace Alliance of Canada’s Capital, who advocated for the elm at Tuesday’s meeting. “At the very end, the additional member that showed up sort of swung the vote.”
Johanis had expressed pessimism about tree’s fate last week, saying the scene already looked like the beginning of a “tree massacre.”
Although others around it had already been removed, the rare elm was still standing because Larry Bagnell, the Liberal committee chair, had asked Public Services and Procurement Canada not to fell it until MPs could hear expert testimony. It is part of a broader look at how MPs can have more say in Hill construction plans.
“Whatever happens to this elm makes a statement which gets magnified and resonates far and wide,” Johanis said during his opening remarks Tuesday. He connected the tree’s survival to climate change. “At this time of climate crisis, every action matters, every bit of warming matters, every year matters and every choice matters.”
All of the other American elms on the Hill had been wiped out by Dutch elm disease in the 1970s and ’80s, Johanis testified. This elm could survive up to 200 or 300 years. There had been conflicting reports about this particular tree’s health, and couldn’t PSPC wait until its leaves came out to assess whether it was healthy enough to save?
“The tree, according to the arborist, might be sufficiently unhealthy that it wouldn’t survive the winter,” said Conservative MP Scott Reid. He asked Johanis: “Is it your view that we will be better able to figure out if it survived the winter by waiting for the winter to end?”
Johanis said it was.
Reid pointed to research about an elm tree in Cambridge, Mass. that had been preserved because of its historical significance. Even after it was assessed to be in poor health, it survived for another 40 or 50 years. There are ways, Johanis said in response, for trees to be nurtured and kept alive, if there’s the will to do so. But it’s difficult to recommend how this elm might be cared for when construction plans for the parliamentary renovation aren’t even public, he added. “We’re just shooting in the dark here.”
Robert Wright, an assistant deputy minister for PSPC, shed some light. A new visitors centre was to extend underground on either side of Centre Block, to “connect the triad and create a host of services that have been requested by Parliament.” The elm is in the middle of the excavation zone, and several assessments from arborists expressed doubt it would survive more than five years anyway, he explained (although one such report had put the tree in good health last May).
Contracts would need to be renegotiated and plans would need to be redrawn to save the tree even temporarily, coming at a “significant cost,” Wright testified. Besides, the plan is to eventually increase the green space on Parliament Hill — just not for about a decade. Fourteen of 30 trees in the construction zone are being relocated, and 64 new trees will be planted, he said, including some propagated from samples of this specific elm.
Bagnell asked why the visitors centre couldn’t be built out in front of Centre Block rather than east, underneath the tree. Wright said this would affect the “symmetry” of the centre — even though it will not be visible from outside — and besides, “it would not lead to the tree living for a long period,” he said.
NDP MP Randall Garrison, who quibbled over the “symmetry argument,” suggested the committee ask for a moratorium until the end of June, so that one last assessment of the tree’s health could be conducted before a final decision was made.
“I’m from Vancouver Island. I’m pretty used to citizens chaining themselves to trees to try to preserve them,” he’d said earlier, seeming to accept Johanis’s view that saving the tree would be a symbolic decision. “If our project here is to restore Centre Block, it’s not just the building but the sight that gives meaning. And that tree has stood there almost as long.”
Liberals had been short a member on the committee throughout witness testimony, which would have given opposition MPs enough votes to grant the elm a stay of execution. But with moments to spare before the end of the meeting, Liberal MP Dan Ruimy appeared in the committee room and, after a whisper in the ear from another Liberal MP, voted with his colleagues to defeat the motion.
PSPC is expected to make the chop on or after April 12.
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