The international praise shows no sign of abating. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s speech on Monday at the United Nations climate conference in Paris – declaring that “Canada is back” – was received with a standing ovation. Everywhere he went during a short appearance he was met by cheers and demands for selfies. A few days before, the New York Times touted his “swift about-face,” congratulating him for “reversing course” on climate change.



Amazing what a winning smile and a few small gestures can accomplish. For a start, Trudeau had merely to show up to distinguish himself from Canada’s former government. Stephen Harper had skipped last year’s UN climate summit in New York (though stopped by for the free dinner). The Conservative government’s antagonism to these international negotiations was conveyed not with diplomatic niceties, but the sophistication of a gang of apes.

So it’s easy to be encouraged by Trudeau’s change in tone and approach. But when you come back to the table, doesn’t it count what you bring? Over the course of an entire election, and since coming to power, the Liberal government has chosen not to even hint at new emissions targets, and so came to Paris with Stephen Harper’s – well below that of comparable European countries. Turns out the man with the sweet look is packing what the brutish guest before him brought.

Six years ago in Copenhagen, at the last climate conference that was supposed to save the world, governments promised to keep warming below 2 degrees. Even then, low-lying Pacific Island nations insisted on a target of 1.5 degrees, so their countries could survive rising sea levels. African leaders called the two degrees warming target a “death sentence.”

But now leaders’s targets won’t even meet that previous goal. Canada’s pledges, taken together with other countries, will hurtle us well beyond three degrees – warming approaching a level that climate scientist Kevin Anderson calls “incompatible with an organized global community.” To make matters worse, Trudeau joined the United States in saying the agreement does not need to be legally binding – a slap in the face of the world’s poorest countries. We know what happens when corporations or government are encouraged to voluntarily reduce emissions: very little at all. Or they go backwards.

Canadian faith-based activist Christine Boyle in Paris posed the right question: “Why is it that Canada can support legally binding trade agreements, but not legally binding climate agreements?” But the double-standard is even worse than it seems.

Backed by Trudeau as much as Harper, the big trade agreements currently being ratified – the TransPacific Partnership and Canadian-European trade agreement - stand to undermine any ambitious climate policies. First off, they will massively increase high-emissions exports. They may ban green energy subsidies. And even more insidiously, they grant corporations the right to sue governments in private tribunals if environmental laws cut into their profit-making. Want to pass a moratorium against destructive shale gas fracking in Quebec? Get sued for $250 million. You’d think the Canadian government would know better: under existing trade pacts, they’re already the most sued government in the world. And yet Trudeau is prepared to pass them without even debate, contrary to an electoral promise.

Trudeau has brought in some positive reforms: scientists are no longer muzzled, the attack on charitable groups have been called off, and he has pledged a few billion to a fund to help countries in the global south adapt to warming. But the danger in Trudeau’s plan on climate change is the same danger with the UN climate agreement itself: that failure is packaged as victory, that a hugely insufficient agenda is sold as positive change.

All the principles Trudeau has touted on the international stage could reverse this at home – if he followed through on them. In Paris, Trudeau declared that Canada “will act based on the best scientific evidence and advice.” More than 3.6 million people around the world backed the same principle when they signed a petition, delivered by President of Marshall Islands to the UN earlier this week, calling for at least 80 percent of fossil fuels to be left in the ground and 100 percent renewable economies by 2050 – what the world’s top climate scientists have told is both possible and necessary.

That scientific perspective should have some bearing on the biggest contributer to Canada’s increase in carbon emissions: the tar sands. Except Trudeau’s foreign affairs minister Stephane Dion has already explained that he supports their “sustainable growth.” Some scientific advice could put his confusion to rest: there is no sustainable way to shred pristine forest, peel back the earth’s skin, carve out the most carbon-intensive oil, and ship it for burning around the world.

Trudeau’s international audience was no less impressed when he declared that Indigenous peoples “have known for thousands of years how to care for our planet. The rest of us have a lot to learn. And no time to waste.” But one of Trudeau’s quickest moves was to backtrack on the idea of increased consultation with First Nations on energy projects. And the Liberals have already made clear they’ll be breaking another campaign promise: to overhaul ongoing pipeline reviews, which have become rubber stump venues that shut out of the full voices of, what a surprise, Indigenous peoples.

And Trudeau won’t move the country toward low-carbon economy if his ministers have directions to push in the other direction. The Natural Resources Minister praised Alberta’s new climate plan, which allows for an 43 percent emissions increase, for one specific reason: it will undermine the resistance to pipelines. And as if to make clear the objective of government policy, he hired as chief-of-staff a former Shell employee and vice-president of Canada’s biggest oil lobby. What are those chisselling noises you hear? It’s the sound of principles being hollowed to the core.

The most effective climate action in Canada hasn’t been thanks to any government: it’s been the work of popular movements, led by Indigenous peoples. By stopping fossil fuel projects and pipelines from being built, they’ve already kept billions of tar sands investment out of the tar sands – and carbon in the ground. But we need to do more than just hem in the worst of the government’s plans: we need bold national policy. Like massive public investment that puts people, starting with the worst impacted, to work in good jobs, building health communities, while radically scaling back emissions.

On Thursday morning in Paris a group of Canadian youth delegates staged a protest: “We must be heard, not just seen,” they chanted in the conference halls. Their message to Trudeau: selfies won’t cut it. It’s time for substantive policy. Even if you believe that politicians deserve honeymoons, it might be time to declare that Trudeau’s is over. The stakes are too high. The timeline – dictated by science – too short.

Abroad or at home, we can’t live with lowered expectations, satisfied by rhetoric alone. Trudeau’s government must start acting by their principles – or be forced to.

On twitter: @Martin_Lukacs