Canada owes Justin Trudeau a great deal. After all, long before he really wanted to, he took on the most difficult task of all: trying to meet the soaring and unreasonable expectations of a political institution circling the toilet bowl — the Liberal Party of Canada.

First, an anecdote: I was speaking with then-Liberal Senator Willie Moore before the last federal election about what success would look like for Trudeau. His answer was automatic: a majority government. After a small pause, he added, almost reluctantly, “A minority government at least.”

At the time, I thought those expectations were excessive and unfair, more aspirational than real. Beating Tom Mulcair for second spot would be tough enough, let alone dethroning Stephen Harper — or so I believed.

And it wasn’t just my spidey sense at work here. The Liberals had bellyflopped from leader to leader, falling to third party status in the house. Trudeau himself admitted he wasn’t “ready” for the Big Job — a mantra quickly parroted by his political foes.

When Trudeau changed his mind and went for the leadership, I asked him what had suddenly made him feel he was “ready.” Sitting at a booth in the Metropolitan Brasserie in Ottawa, he was at his candid best, free of the stopwatch gang that truncates his thoughts.

Trudeau explained that his lack of readiness was not as important as the Liberal party’s need. He’d led a privileged life and it was time to do what he could to return his father’s party, and the country, to the right “values”. His word. Trudeau believed he was needed.

He was right. Stephen Harper was taking Canada over the cliff towards an ugly, U.S.-style Republicanism. It was a vision built on fostering abhorrent racial and ethnic divisions, exchanging diplomacy for elbows-up militarism, a discernible drift towards a police state, abandonment of the environment, and utter contempt for the country’s free press and democratic and parliamentary traditions.

It’s not often that politicians shoot the moon, but Trudeau did exactly that. Senator Moore must have been gobsmacked. Trudeau stopped the creepiest elements of the Conservative movement in its tracks. He won a majority government and, suddenly, Canadians could watch their prime minister on the world stage without cringing.

Prince Charming kissed the sleeping nation and she awoke more beautiful than before. To many, it felt like a love story that followed a hostile takeover. It was hope. There was nothing wrong with Canada that couldn’t be fixed by what was right about Canada. Justin Trudeau seemed to know that, and even came to symbolize it.

And then things started to slip into a fuzzier focus. An old criticism was leveled at Trudeau — one as old as the modern Liberal party itself and supported by enough evidence to be taken seriously: He had campaigned on the Left, but would govern on the Right.

Most progressives, for example, didn’t see the large increase in military spending coming under the Liberals, especially at a time when so many First Nations still live without safe drinking water.

Few observers seemed to think that the rhetoric on the newest accord to fight climate change would remain mere words. Not after that party in Paris. Not with Canada “back”.

But Trudeau stuck with Harper’s emissions targets and green-lighted more unpopular pipelines than some of his new followers could stomach. His comprehensive climate plan is an empty vessel — as his climate commissioner’s latest audit shows and as David Suzuki rightly points out.

Trudeau allowed the ruinous Site C Dam in British Columbia to proceed — even though the new NDP government, coastal people and conservationists have debunked any economic or environmental justifications for it.

We’ve already got a governor general. We don’t need two vice-regal Walmart greeters. What we need is a leader — someone whose words mean a lot more than Harper’s did. We’ve already got a governor general. We don’t need two vice-regal Walmart greeters. What we need is a leader — someone whose words mean a lot more than Harper’s did.

It didn’t look much like evidence-based policy to experts who knew the turf — people like old Ottawa hand Harry Swain, who reviewed the project for both Ottawa and British Columbia and came out against it in the end. Trudeau may have wisely appointed a science adviser, but the science on Site C was ignored.

There were broken promises on electoral reform and access to information. Canada is in 46th place on a list ranking nations on freedom of information, wedged between Peru and Bulgaria. There have been enough garden-variety scandals to make Canadians think that maybe not as much has changed since Harper’s departure as they’d hoped. The omnibus bills haven’t ended, there is still no freedom of information access to ministers’ offices and the country’s rivers and lakes remain as unprotected as they were under Harper.

All of which means that the narrative has changed at this point, roughly halfway through Trudeau’s first term. Canada gave him a lot of credit for vanquishing Harper, indulging his rookie mistakes and the first flutterings of hubris. The trip to the Aga Khan’s island was simply a drop-dead foolish thing for a guy who wants to run as a champion of the middle class to do.

Dumping the nominated chair of the committee on the Status of Women was a petulant, bullying act. Playing judge, juror and executioner in the case of two of his own MPs accused of sexual assault — who were never officially charged with anything — was arrogant and ill-advised.

Lollygagging on the inquiry into murdered and missing aboriginal women is shameful, and earned Trudeau the verbal abuse he got from Aboriginal women at a recent vigil.

Still, until now, Canadians have been giving the PM a pass. But the story is no longer about what Canada owes Trudeau. It’s about what Trudeau owes Canada and the people who put him where he is.

We’ve already got a governor general. We don’t need two vice-regal Walmart greeters. What we need is a leader — someone whose words mean a lot more than Harper’s did.

What Trudeau needs to do now is get back to governing as a progressive. That’s how he presented himself to the country in 2015; that’s what the people who voted for him thought they were getting. He made promises that must be kept — the biggest ones touching on the health of the planet itself. There are promises he broke that should be revisited. Harper’s swamp isn’t even close to being drained.

Trudeau has to keep his word to First Nations. No more phoney ceremonies, syrupy words and symbolic appointments. With big (and perhaps strategically wise) budget deficits out to the horizon, this will be difficult. He also has to show people he is truly an environmental champion, not just another pol who says the right things.

He has to be transparent, and not just wax eloquently about transparency as he huddles over his secrets like all the rest.

He has to understand that the world stage isn’t just one big Karaoke night for his own amusement. He has to stand up for the oppressed — people like the Palestinians — the way Brian Mulroney unabashedly stood up to South Africa over Apartheid. In a word, he has to be the person Canadians thought he was.

And he has to understand something right now: Even with all his current popularity, with his youth and energy, with his good heart and, yes, his genuine love of people, it is far from a slam dunk that he will be back after the next election.

That is not a prediction of defeat for the Liberals. It is just a statement of the obvious: Things change quickly in politics — and they’re changing now. Trudeau’s father learned that in 1972 when he went from a strong majority to a slim minority in four short years. The constellation of forces that brought Justin Trudeau to power has disappeared.

Next time out, there will be no dragon to slay in the form of Stephen Harper. That means that New Democrats who abandoned Tom Mulcair because they thought Trudeau had the best chance of ridding the country of Harper will not be giving their vote to the Liberals in trust.

They will be voting for Jagmeet Singh, who is younger than Trudeau, equally charismatic and every bit as mentally tough. And he is one more thing: He belongs to the progressive side of the progressive spectrum in this era of half-assed principle, of self-interest that tries to pass itself off as a political philosophy. Trudeau beat the New Democrats by running to their left. Singh could easily do the same thing to him.

As they congratulated Singh on his victory, the Grits also announced a string of progressive promises, including those old and often broken pledges of more daycare spaces and more affordable housing. That was no coincidence. The Liberals hear the footsteps.

If Canadians don’t get the Justin Trudeau they thought they were getting in 2015, they may decide they can do without him altogether.

It is time for the real Justin Trudeau to stand up.

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