The internet has a long memory, and Justin Trudeau is finding that out the hard way this week.
The former Canadian Prime Minister was spotted at the Coachella music festival over the weekend with his girlfriend, pop superstar Katy Perry, and the two of them looked like they were having a wonderful time. Perry posted footage of the outing, and in it, the couple could be seen sipping drinks from red Solo cups. A completely ordinary thing to do at a music festival. Except Trudeau is not a completely ordinary person, and the internet was not about to let this one go quietly.
Because here is the thing. When Trudeau was in office, he championed Canada’s ban on single-use plastics, a policy he pushed from as far back as 2019. Plastic bags, straws, a whole list of items were targeted in the name of environmental responsibility. Canadians were expected to adapt. And now, here was the man who sold them that sacrifice, casually enjoying his weekend beverage from a plastic cup at one of the biggest parties in the world, with his famous girlfriend filming the whole thing.
The reaction was swift and it was not kind.
“Remember when Justin Trudeau banned plastic bags and straws for Canadians to save the planet? Now he’s posting pics using solo cups. Rules for thee, but not for me,” one person wrote on X. Another kept it shorter and sharper, calling him out directly for drinking from a plastic cup after banning them for an entire country. Someone else laid it out in a neat little timeline format: Trudeau in June 2019 announcing the plastics ban, Trudeau in April 2026 smashing drinks from a Solo cup at Coachella.
The contrast did not need much editorial commentary.
To be fair, the specifics matter here. Canada’s single-use plastics legislation does not cover every type of plastic cup, so Trudeau may not have technically violated the letter of the law he helped create. But technicalities have never been great at cooling down public outrage, and the optics of the situation were always going to be the real story regardless of what the fine print says.
Trudeau resigned as Prime Minister in early 2025, stepping down after a turbulent final stretch in office. His personal life had already undergone a significant shift before that, having separated from his wife of 18 years, Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau, more than a year before his resignation. He went public with Katy Perry in October 2025, a pairing that raised plenty of eyebrows at the time and has continued to generate headlines since.
This particular headline, though, was probably not the kind either of them was hoping for when they packed their bags for the desert.
