Trudeau once spoke of a new era of transparent government. We're still waiting.

Shortly before Parliament adjourned for the summer last week, the House of Commons ethics committee tabled the findings from its study of the federal government's access to information system — the program through which citizens and journalists can (in theory) obtain information in the government's possession.

The 118-page report makes 38 recommendations aimed at fixing what is widely considered a broken system. But in a dissenting opinion, the Liberal members of the committee quibbled with nine of those calls and even questioned the sincerity of the committee's Conservative members.

"The Conservative Party of Canada would never implement such a recommendation should it form government again," the Liberals wrote in response to the committee's recommendation that cabinet confidences no longer be automatically exempt from disclosure.

It is indisputably a lot easier to call for a major expansion of government transparency from the safety of the opposition benches. The Liberals themselves are well acquainted with that phenomenon.

"Once I look at the trend lines in democracy, the empowering of citizens and activists, I know that the government of the future is going to be very, very different than governments of the past," Trudeau said at a sparsely attended event in April 2015.

At the time, Trudeau was promoting his own proposals for access-to-information reform — one of which would be significantly scaled back after he came to office.

Back then, Trudeau was famously promising a government that would be "open by default." That promise aged poorly. It has been made to look even worse over the past month.

But beyond even the basic value of transparency or any single change to the Access to Information Act, Trudeau once seemed to see the possibility of a deeper conversation about public policy — one that would push both governments and citizens.

"I think we're going to have to embark on a completely different style of government," he said. "A government that both accepts its responsibilities to be open and transparent, but also a population that doesn't mind lifting the veil to see how sausages are made. That there is a dual responsibility, in changing towards more open and transparent functioning, that really will go to a deep shift in how government operates."

Eight years later, Trudeau would be hard-pressed to say that he has paved the way for any such "deep shift."

Trudeau could plausibly argue the business of the federal government is now conducted with greater openness than it  was before the Liberals won power in 2015.

A committee of parliamentarians is now empowered to review classified information. The office of the parliamentary budget officer has been made fully independent and is better funded. The Prime Minister's Office has published the mandate letters issued to cabinet ministers and the government has made some piecemeal efforts to report publicly on progress made toward its campaign commitments — such as a regularly updated tally of drinking water advisories in Indigenous communities.

Trudeau has made himself readily accessible — perhaps even overly so — to reporters in news conferences and to voters in town hall tours. And the government has invested in data collection and restored the long-form census, measures that could provide a better sense of whether public policy is translating into results.

But simply being better than the last guy might not count for much. And whatever the Trudeau government can say for itself, those claims would be drowned out by increasingly loud complaints.