"It's time to pay a living wage, to pay your taxes and give your workers the benefits -- and peace of mind -- that come with stable, full-time contracts," Trudeau told the St. Matthews gala dinner crowd in Hamburg, Germany.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, bedecked in tuxedo and tails, stood before a crowd of some of Europe's richest and most powerful people last week and told them to get in touch with the middle class.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gestures as he speaks during the traditional banquet "Matthiae-Mahlzeit" (St. Matthew's Day Banquet) at the town hall in Hamburg, Germany Feb. 17, 2017. (Photo: Morris Mac Matzen/Reuters)

"I fully appreciate the irony of preaching about the struggles of the middle class to a sea of tuxedos and ball gowns, while wearing a bow-tie myself," he said. "But this discussion needs to happen."

Still, Trudeau missed another irony here, a much bigger one. Just days before the prime minister spoke in Hamburg, the European Parliament voted in favour of approving CETA, the Canada-EU free trade deal.

Even though the Trudeau government and EU officials have been calling CETA the "most progressive" free trade deal ever, none of those progressive issues Trudeau mentioned were addressed in it.

The deal does not require the payment of living wages; it does not mandate a crackdown on tax evasion; and it certainly does not try to guarantee the "peace of mind ... that come[s] with stable, full-time contracts."

(In fact, if anything, Trudeau's Liberals have been telling Canadians the opposite -- that we are going to have to get used to precarious work.)

Do Trudeau and his cabinet ministers really believe that a trade deal negotiated by Harper is "progressive?"

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A new study from UN researcher Pierre Kohler and Delft University economist Servaas Storm forecasts that efficiencies and competitive pressures created by CETA will result in there being fewer jobs across the trade area.

They predict the whole trade area will see employment reduced by about 227,000 jobs, with 23,000 of those lost in Canada and the rest in Europe. That will depress wages so that, by 2023, the average Canadian worker will be foregoing $2,460 in lost income due to lower wages.

But what's bad for the middle class, in this case, is good for business. The same study found that CETA will result in a shift of income from employees to business owners and shareholders of around 1.6 percentage points. At current income levels, that's a shift of $24 billion annually from employees to owners. Quite a notable increase in wealth inequality is likely to follow.

If this trade deal doesn't appear as "progressive" as it may seem, maybe that has something to do with the fact that almost all of it was negotiated on Canada's behalf by the previous Conservative government led by Stephen Harper. There certainly weren't many pronouncements about CETA being a "progressive" trade deal back in 2013, when Harper signed it.

Do Trudeau and his cabinet ministers really believe that a trade deal negotiated by Harper is "progressive?" It seems unlikely. More likely is that they are hoping people don't realize this was a made-by-Harper trade deal, and are just aiming for a political victory that makes it seem the Liberals are pushing in the opposite direction of the U.S.'s protectionist new president.