Okay, Junior, the Time For Excuses Is Over.

Justin Trudeau has done Canada a service by apologizing on behalf of the country for past wrongs. It was the right thing to do and, while it won't expunge the shameful past nor will it make anything right, it's a long overdue first step.

While I commend Trudeau for apologizing for the wrongs of others I can't help wondering who will apologize for his wrongs and his failures? Foremost among them will be climate change and the Trudeau government's inability and unwillingness to act on these gathering threats. Instead we have a prime minister who promotes pipelines and bitumen and, in an act of brazen sophistry worthy of Trump, tells us that is the key to a green future for Canada.

The National Observer today reminds us that Trudeau is on the wrong side of this issue. Worse yet, he's on the wrong side of 79 per cent of Canadians who believe we're facing catastrophe if we fail to do more, a lot more, to fight climate change.

And this “new normal” extends across party lines. 67 per cent of Conservative voters fear a looming economic disaster if we fail to do more, while 85 per cent of them believe we have “a moral responsibility” to act.

What about the hard politics of holding the federation together? Abacus asked residents of the oilsands provinces and found that, “More than 75% believe that the consequences of inaction will be severe or very severe or catastrophic, and most do not believe that acting to fight climate change will be bad for the economy or for taxes.”

It's clear that Trudeau is working in someone's interests. It's equally clear that's not the public interest. A narrower interest has Trudeau's ear.

McKenna remains as upbeat a booster for #climateaction! as ever, but the reception is souring. Canada’s largest source of carbon emissions — oil and gas production — is not just steaming along but expanding, the feds have approved major export terminals for fracked gas as well as oilsands pipelines to Vancouver harbour and the U.S. Midwest. Halfway through its term in office, Canada’s climate plans are still mostly proposals and agenda items for consultations and task forces — even before theory meets practice, the proposed plans would leave Canada millions of tons of carbon shy of meeting those Harper targets, which McKenna vowed would be the bare minimum, “the floor not the ceiling.”

It's time for Justin to put on the long pants and become the prime minister of Canada. A good place to begin is by scrapping fossil energy subsidies, direct and indirect, that the International Monetary Fund pegs at somewhere between  34 and 46 billion dollars each year.  

McKenna has proposed several important public policy mechanisms, but none are designed to galvanize the public imagination. Instead of vagaries about “clean growth,” why not put something compelling and tangible in the shop window? Major countries like the U.K. and China are setting dates to end the sale of fossil fuelled cars. That’s galvanizing.

On the rhetorical front, Trudeau and his ministers should engage Canadians in a more direct conversation about where we’re heading. Instead of mushy talking points about “transition,” let’s have an honest conversation about what we’re transitioning to. A zero carbon economy where fossil fuel emissions have been eliminated.

We need to eliminate fossil fuel emissions in a few short decades to avoid catastrophic impacts. That’s the point of the Paris climate agreement and the point of the climate summit underway in Germany. It’s time to move that conversation beyond the hallways of the U.N. and grapple with it as a truly national conversation at the dinner tables and coffee shops of the country.