Canada Just Made Nature Protection a National Priority
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May 4, 2026
On March 31, 2026, the Government of Canada released A Force of Nature: Canada's Strategy to Protect Nature. This is a $3.8B+ federal plan to protect 30% of Canada's lands and waters by 2030. It's the most significant federal nature strategy in a generation, and it signals a fundamental shift in how this country expects businesses to think about their relationship with the natural world.
Canada has committed to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF - the international agreement signed by 196 countries to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030) target known as "30x30": protect 30% of lands and 30% of waters by 2030. A Force of Nature is the detailed federal roadmap for how Canada gets there.
The ambition is staggering in scale. Reaching 30% means protecting and conserving at least 1.6 million km² of land and 715,857 km² of ocean in four years.
Canada is moving terrestrial conservation from 14% to 30% and marine from 15.5% to 30% in four years. The $1.63B Canada Nature Protection Fund will specifically restore old-growth forests and peatlands, and is designed to pull private sector investment alongside public dollars. Critically, the federal government owns only 6% of Canada's land, so reaching 30% legally requires businesses, landowners, Indigenous communities, and provinces to participate.
The strategy formally embeds the mitigation hierarchy (avoid, minimize, mitigate, offset) into how infrastructure and development projects get approved in Canada. For any company operating in energy, transportation, natural resources, or any sector that touches land and water, this is the pillar to watch: nature investment is moving from voluntary CSR to a condition of development approval.
The global funding gap to meet biodiversity commitments has grown to $1 trillion USD annually and over 80% of current investment comes from public sources. To close the gap, the federal government is launching an Expert Taskforce on Natural Capital Accounting and Nature Financing in spring 2026. The standards it sets will define how corporate nature investments are measured, reported, and validated across Canada and beyond.
The strategy is direct: there is no path to 30x30 without Indigenous leadership.
This includes $231M over five years to enhance Indigenous Guardians Programs, including a new Arctic Indigenous Guardians Program, and some of the largest Indigenous-led conservation initiatives in the world.
The strategy creates demand for exactly what veritree does. Our mission is to elevate global restoration and unlock investment in nature. The Canadian government's third pillar is effectively another version of that sentence.
Here's how the pieces connect:
The mitigation hierarchy creates new demand for verified outcomes. veritree's platform provides exactly that: real-time monitoring, species-level data, Indigenous community partnerships, and third-party-ready impact reporting built for the standards ahead. We believe companies that begin investing in verified nature outcomes now will be better positioned, operationally and reputationally.
The Canada Nature Protection Fund prioritizes co-benefits. The Fund explicitly targets projects that maximize outcomes across land securement, species recovery, and GHG reduction simultaneously. This is precisely the kind of multi-benefit restoration veritree's projects are designed to deliver, from forest restoration in British Columbia to kelp seaforestation off the BC coast to mangrove work in East Africa. Companies that invest with veritree aren't buying a single metric; they're contributing to layered, measurable outcomes that align with where policy is heading.
Canadian companies with operations touching land, water, or resource extraction will increasingly encounter the mitigation hierarchy in permitting conversations. Sustainability leaders at financial institutions, energy companies, retailers, and consumer brands will face growing pressure to demonstrate nature-positive outcomes, not just carbon commitments.
The Expert Taskforce on Natural Capital Accounting is scheduled to launch this spring. When it begins setting standards for how nature investments are validated, companies that already have verified, measurable restoration programs will be ahead of the curve. Companies that don't will be starting from zero.
The businesses already partnering with veritree are investing in verified restoration today. They're generating real impact data, communicating that impact to their stakeholders, and building the kind of track record that will matter when reporting standards arrive.
If you're thinking about your nature strategy, book a strategy call.
veritree connects businesses to verified, community-led restoration projects across Canada and around the world. Our platform gives you the impact data, the story, and the credibility to show that your investment in nature is real.
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