Trudeau was as diligent as any (party member at the convention) about casting the appropriate lights and shadows over the first two and a half years of his mandate.

Regardless of the party involved, political conventions are like the meetings of any fan club: resolutely optimistic, excessively fawning and driven by the power of uncritical thinking.

The Liberal Party’s policy convention in Halifax offered all of that, and less. Which is to say, it was not pay-for-view material. Pep rallies for the converted rarely are.

With the party’s numbers slipping in the polls, there was nonetheless a cloying, self-congratulatory haze over the proceedings. That pose was epitomized by Bill Morneau recounting his epiphanic cab ride story.

It went like this: Morneau said the driver recognized him (as often happens, he reminded his audience) and asked if he could call his wife, presumably with the knee-wobbling news that he had the finance minister in the backseat.

Morneau agreed. The cabbie then put his wife on speaker phone. Why? So that he and his wife could personally thank the finance minister for all the jingle he had put in their jeans with his tax policies.

Regular people, you see, don’t care about Morneau’s aversion to blind trusts as a millionaire finance minister, or record deficits. That is the stuff of “negative” opposition politicians and pesky journalists. No, regular people love Morneau for being Robin Hood in a suit — taking from the rich to give to the poor.

That’s right: Bill Morneau as Robin Hood.

Then there was that huggy bear, kissy face “conversation” involving the prime minister’s top sidekick Gerald Butts, and Obamacrat turned CNN pundit David Axelrod. After what seemed like hours of ego-liberation, laced with stories about their humble progressive roots, it might all have ended in elopement. It was certainly the longest 45 minutes in broadcast history.

Their confab had absolutely nothing to do with policy matters. The ostensible point of this mushy exercise was apparently to celebrate progressive politics. Fair enough, this was, after all, a family reunion of the Liberal Party, not the Oxford debating society.

But why the Liberals felt the need to do that with an American apparatchik at a Canadian political convention is anybody’s guess. I suppose it’s better than dining with Steve Bannon, which Butts has also done. Intellectual indigestion must have followed.

Despite all the hot air about the prime minister’s crowd being a “team,” nothing could be further from the truth. This party worships at the altar of Justin Trudeau — and will ride or die with him. Trudeau was as diligent as any of them about casting the appropriate lights and shadows over the first two and a half years of his mandate.

There were definitely some things to boast about. Probably the most difficult piece of legislation passed by the government was its death with dignity provisions. Trudeau and the Liberals navigated this emotional minefield with grace and courage.

The Liberals have also clearly improved the Canada Pension Plan and the Child Tax Credit to the benefit of a lot of Canadians. And Justin did vanquish Stephen Harper, as millions of Canadians who cast a strategic vote for him, had hoped he would. All real accomplishments calling for a deep bow.

But it is also true that Trudeau’s many broken promises call for a deep apology. Donald Trump will find Jesus before that ever happens at any party’s convention. But it was ludicrous for the prime minister to cover a multitude of failures in his first term with the hackneyed defence that he wasn’t “perfect.”

Not being perfect is a long way from the bumbling fashion shoot Trudeau made of his trip to India.

Not being perfect doesn’t quite explain the sophomoric self-indulgence of holidaying on the private island of the billionaire Aga Khan while posing as the champion of the middle class.

Not being perfect is a long way from being perfidious. Where is the personally promised electoral reform offered during the 2015 election? Gone, but not forgotten.

Trudeau broke his promise that Harper-era environmental assessments for energy projects would be replaced by valid, scientific approvals, or there would be no federal permits.

Instead, he issued permits for B.C.’s ruinous Site C dam, which has just been plagued by another landslide, and the ill-starred Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

Trudeau used science alright — political science.

The prime minister has openly contradicted his passionate commitment to fighting the “politics of fear and division” by fomenting those very things over Kinder Morgan’s dubious pipeline expansion through British Columbia.

He has done that by teaming up with Alberta and the national business lobby to bludgeon B.C. into dropping its environmentally justified opposition to the transportation of noxious substances (diluted bitumen) across its land and waterways.

First Nations leaders were personally assured by the prime minister that they were the most important file he held. The watchword of this government when it came to that relationship was supposed to be “reconciliation.” There was supposed to be respect for another level of government — Aboriginal government.

Despite that promise, despite the obligations of both the Constitution and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, it will be First Nations “protectors” who will be on the firing line on Burnaby Mountain. It will be First Nations protectors facing the RCMP or the army if they stand firm against the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion Trudeau is dedicated to imposing.

And then there are all the other things that just haven’t materialized out of that torrent of promises made in 2015.

The government has been a flop on the reform of access to information. Nine hundred days in and Trudeau ministers’ offices are still not covered by promised changes to the act.

Charities still have to wonder if they will have their charitable status revoked, or if the Canada Revenue Agency will snoop into their affairs, as it did in Harper times, looking for alleged “political activities.” Having a cup of coffee with a politician could be seen as political in some circles.

After a recent meeting with Morneau, a lot of NGOs were left wondering if Harper was still in charge.

And those subsidies to Big Oil which Trudeau promised to get rid of? Those are still in place.

Fortunately for the Liberals, the prime minister was dead right on one thing. Despite a cosmetic change at the top of the Conservative Party, it’s still the party of Harper.

With Andrew Scheer standing up for the gun lobby while students are being routinely gunned down south of the border, there is only a minimal threat from the right for the Liberals.

On the left, the NDP could challenge for progressive supremacy if their leader ever leaves the sidelines for the dust of the arena.

But the Liberals could largely neutralize Jagmeet Singh and his party by usurping their policy on pharmacare. The Halifax convention went a long way towards guaranteeing that a universal pharmacare plan will be the centrepiece of Trudeau’s 2019 election platform.

But as weak as the field he faces appears to be, Trudeau is not home free. He keeps making statements that match the right words to the wrong actions. And that developing bad habit, that instinct to do politics the old way with empty words, is breaking apart the coalition that elected him. The environmental community is a critical part of that and it is deeply disappointed in Trudeau.

He went out of his way at the Halifax convention to excoriate the Harper government for failing to tackle climate change. That is comedy in hot pursuit of farce.

Despite his rhetoric in Paris, Trudeau has been more of a petro-politician than Harper. Not even Harper would impose a bitumen bearing pipeline on a province that opposed it. That push comes amid word Trudeau’s government is on target to exceed the emissions cuts agreed to at the Paris Summit by 200 megatonnes a year.

The Liberals approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion with zero science done on how a diluted bitumen spill would act in the open ocean — at clear odds with his promise to develop science-based policy.

And this summer, BP Canada will be drilling off the southeast coast of Nova Scotia, thanks to a permit from federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, and have asked for six more permits. The project is adamantly opposed by local Mi’kmaq communities.

But not to worry. The government is doing all it can to replace the natural gas that fuels the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill with a more eco-friendly energy source.

Can the Justin Trudeau Aquarium for North Atlantic right whales be far behind?

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