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It is hard to think of a government that has backpedalled as hard on as many fronts so soon after being elected as the Trudeau Liberals.

It took the Chrétien government, it is true, only a month to renege on its promise to “renegotiate or abrogate” NAFTA. But it was a couple of years before it made the transition from austerity-bashing to deficit-slashing, and a year or two more before it finally admitted it had no intention of abolishing the GST.

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But here we are, barely two months into the new government, and already the Liberal platform is in tatters. The promise to hold deficits to $10-billion for two years is but a distant memory. The promise to bring in 25,000 refugees by New Year’s was off by a factor of four. The CF-18s are still flying bombing missions over Iraq and Syria, and may remain there past the original March deadline.

Then there is the matter of the Saudi tanks. Strictly speaking, the government’s decision to honour a $15-billion contract to deliver light armoured vehicles to the Saudi Arabian National Guard is not in violation of any election promise: asked about it during the campaign, Justin Trudeau was clear that he would not intervene. But the government’s dissembling explanations of its stance are no less clearly contrary to the broader understanding on which it was elected: that it would not behave like the government that preceded it.