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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been busy and all over the place in his first hundred days, but infrastructure money is not yet flowing.CHRIS WATTIE/Reuters

When FDR coined the term "first hundred days," it wasn't to measure his presidency, but to push Congress to pass his New Deal to alleviate the Great Depression. Now it's a political trope to frame the vigour of a new government.

If activity is the measure, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau buzzed through the hundred-day marker Thursday with high marks. He's flown to summits, crisscrossed the country, met premiers, mayors and First Nations chiefs, and reset relations with foreign nations. He delivered symbols of post-Harper change. And his government wrestled the challenge of resettling Syrians, with fudged deadlines, but results.

But Franklin Roosevelt would still be impatient. Mr. Trudeau's Liberals promised not just change, but government intervention to get the economy rolling. Their first hundred days have been more the former than the latter. Since they took office, the outlook has deteriorated, but the first hundred days haven't rolled out Mr. Trudeau's new deal to alleviate the economic malaise.

The Liberals point to their first piece of legislation, a middle-class tax cut, as evidence of economic action. But the promise of an infrastructure spending-spree putting building cranes into action and people to work – a key feature of the Trudeau promise – is still waiting.

It's unfair to expect too much. Green-lighting building projects is complex and the Liberals can't inject new billions until they issue a budget. But there's money waiting unspent under existing programs – Mr. Trudeau keeps saying so. So far, his government has approved only nine relatively modest projects.

Think of the signal his Liberals could have sent through the economy if they had announced that new (exhaustively studied) bridge to Montreal and big projects in hard-hit Alberta, and elsewhere, in the first hundred days.

Of course, the hundred days is an artifice for politicians and pundits alike, and used by new leaders to portray action, as Bill Clinton, for example, promised his first hundred would bring "America's renewal."

The Liberals use it, too. They sent an e-mail blast this week asking potential donors which hundred-days accomplishment they're "most proud" of, like the 50-per-cent female cabinet, reinstatement of the long-form census and the tax cut. They are still consulting on two of the seven items they listed – veterans' pensions and an inquiry on murdered and missing indigenous women – regardless of how you rate the rest.

Aside from the tax cut, the Liberals have tabled only three bills in Parliament: a basic appropriations bill and two bills to repeal Tory measures. At a hundred days, Stephen Harper's government had tabled 13 bills, including the complex Accountability Act. But comparisons are weak. The minority Conservatives feared a quick election and hunkered down to pump out clear, saleable chunks of their platform. "We were in a sprint to the opening of Parliament, and the budget," said Ian Brodie, Mr. Harper's first chief of staff.

Mr. Trudeau has four years, and lingering frustrations with his predecessor. His government has played up symbols of anti-Harper change.

Two tricky symbolic commitments have sucked up the government's attention. The pledge to resettle 25,000 refugees meant overruling naysayers, pushing back deadlines and playing down problems, but Mr. Trudeau can claim an un-Harper accomplishment and the public isn't quibbling about details. This week, the government fulfilled its controversial pledge to withdraw CF-18s from air strikes against the Islamic State by outlining a bigger training mission.

One symbol was key: Mr. Trudeau's hundred days of relationship-building. He convened premiers and met big-city mayors, and attended an indigenous chiefs meeting. His ministers launched travelling consultations on the missing indigenous women's inquiry and outreach on infrastructure.

That's not all empty symbolism. Relationship-building can be crucial to policy: Mr. Harper's aboriginal education policy faltered because of mistrust. But there's no doubt Mr. Trudeau has conveyed a sense Ottawa's personality has changed, and it's popular.

Yet there's still that other half of the Trudeau promise, not change but middle-class economic opportunity, left waiting. Those promises wait for a March budget. That's Mr. Trudeau's real marker, and it will colour how we look back at his first hundred days.

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