Justin Trudeau’s Two-Faced Climate Game
At the Paris climate summit meeting in December 2015, Canada’s freshly elected prime minister, Justin Trudeau, took the podium before his new international fan club and declared, “Canada is back, my friends!”
The young, charismatic Mr. Trudeau promised “sunny ways.” He was ideally positioned to shift the country to a greener future, away from its reliance on resource industries and toward improved relations with Indigenous peoples whose territories are imperiled by energy projects. Yet more than halfway through his mandate, he has adopted the backward energy and economic policies of his predecessor Stephen Harper, an ardent fossil-fuel promoter. Mr. Trudeau has revealed himself to be not a climate crusader, but a pipeline pitchman who tells the world one thing while doing the opposite at home.
photo credit: Teddy Kwok