“Canada is back!” So said Justin Trudeau after his 2015 election. Implicit in that declaration was that Liberal foreign policy would transform Canada’s standing on the world stage. Yet three years on there is little evidence perceptions have changed, at least in global rankings that track country brands.

Under both Conservative and Liberal governments, Canada has maintained a good but not great reputation in the nation brands index put out by Anholt-GfK. Global polling by IPSOS over the last eight years shows much the same thing. “Trudeau or not Trudeau, for Canada it doesn’t really make any difference,” says Vadim Volos, global director of the Anholt-GfK index.

That seems counterintuitive given all the positive media coverage Trudeau has received (the trip to India this past February a glaring exception). Especially early on in his tenure, the glossy magazine covers, the fashion articles about his socks and the crowds of young women in Asia wanting to pose for selfies suggested an extreme makeover was in the works. If Donald Trump could single-handedly drag the American brand down, with favourable opinion at an historic low among former friends and allies, why has Trudeau not succeeded in adding extra gloss to the Canada brand?

It starts with Canada not being the United States, an obvious point but an important one. The world waits with bated breath to see what Trump will do next and adjusts its view of the US accordingly. Few outside Canada are hanging on Trudeau’s every word. This means any changes in Canadian policy take much longer to permeate the global consciousness. (We have yet to see how long a reach this week’s legalization of cannabis will have.)

A related reason is that differences that loom large in Canada between political parties and their policies lose their sharpness or disappear completely when viewed from abroad. Canadians might see a huge distinction between Trudeau’s feminist development policy and Stephen Harper’s maternal and child health initiative at the 2010 G8 summit. Viewed from afar it looks like two successive Canadian prime ministers paying attention to the interests of women and girls. Distance erases nuance. And there are many areas where Liberal foreign policy resembles that of the Conservatives. A Conservative foreign minister would have been comfortable citing the three aims outlined by Chrystia Freeland, the Liberal foreign minister, in her key 2017 speech — supporting the international, rules-based order, making the necessary investments in the military, and upholding global trade.

The third and perhaps most important reason why Trudeau has so far failed to change Canada’s image is that actions matter more than intentions or the personal attraction of any one leader. When The Economist declared “Canada is rather cool” in a 2003 cover piece, illustrating it with a moose in sunglasses, it did not point to Jean Chretien, then prime minister. It pointed to the government’s plans to legalize gay marriage and decriminalize marijuana, and its success in erasing the deficit and slashing debt (this was The Economist after all). Some of the Liberals’ key foreign policy plans, such as fighting climate change, boosting the military and increasing involvement in peace operations, are still works in progress. If Trudeau hopes to enhance Canada’s reputation, he must implement policies that are seen as markedly different and better than the ones they replace.

Trudeau is not starting from scratch. And he and his government do not have to carry the burden alone. Business and the education and tourism sectors all help shape foreign perceptions of a country. Not all are doing a good job.

Canada has a generally positive image. When IPSOS asked people in 25 countries last year which country was a force for good in the world, Canada came out on top. Yet this image is often dated and a bit fuzzy. When I travelled around Europe as a foreign correspondent in the 1990s, people often asked about Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, even though he had left office at least a decade earlier. Kasi Rao, head of the Canada-India Business Council, says Indians are aware that Canada has natural resources and commodities. Less well known, he says, is that Canada is a place “where ideas and innovation matters.” That is a serious shortcoming for a country that wants to be a global player in artificial intelligence and other technology.

In a study done a few years ago, researchers asked 6,000 people around the world to list four products or companies they associated with a country. Respondents had no trouble with countries like the US, Japan and even Sweden (naming, for example, Coca-Cola, Toyota, IKEA, Ericsson, etc.). But only a few could come up with even two products from Canada, and they tended to be generic, like lumber, wheat and fish.

Business bears some of the blame for this lack of awareness. Some of the country’s biggest firms and best-known brands travel the world cloaked in anonymity, as if they were a little bit ashamed of their Canadian roots. Try figuring out the home base of companies like Lululemon, Manulife and Magna International or tech firms like Blackberry and Shopify by looking at the home page on their websites. There is nary a maple leaf in sight. Lululemon sounds downright dismissive on its page about its history when it says: “While Vancouver, Canada is where you can trace our beginnings, our global community is where you’ll find our soul.” Canada Goose is an exception to this rule, boasting of its Canadian roots and location. It helps that its product, luxury parkas, fits neatly with the image of the Great White North. Dani Reiss, its president, says other companies could and should be capitalizing on Canada’s positive image. He speculates that some of them “would rather people thought they were American, because from a business point of view they think that sounds bigger or more serious.”