He's got Hollywood looks and a gold-plated political lineage and on Thursday, Justin Trudeau brought his star power to Whitehorse to rally the youth, take a sled dog ride and help fill Yukon MP Larry Bagnell's war chest.

Approximately 80 local Liberal Party faithful attended a $150 plate dinner, featuring Trudeau, at the High Country Inn, while earlier in the day, approximately 200 – mostly students – turned out at the Yukon Arts Centre, where the Papineau MP put on his motivational speaker's hat.

"We have a generation of young people who are better informed and more aware than ever before,” Trudeau told his young audience. "... and you keep getting told ‘You're the leaders of tomorrow.' Well, that leadership starts right now.”

Trudeau, elected in the 2008 federal election, pushed the virtues of community service and implored the attentive young people in the crowd to make a contribution to Canadian society in any way they could.

"That's why for me, drawing on our youth, who are naturally idealistic, long-term thinkers and not beholden to the status quo, to get involved in your community, or politics, as an active citizen,” said Trudeau, who serves as the Liberal critic for Youth, Citizenship and Immigration.

"It's not just a nice idea ... it's a means to an end.”

Though changes that require government intervention, and by association political action, are possible, Trudeau said, it is only through the collective will of citizens that any change can happen.

"There's only one way to change the world and that's through the dedication and actions of individuals .... Governments have reached the point, whether led by presidents, prime ministers ... or emperors, that none of these leaders can make changes unless they have a buy-in from (individuals).”

While Trudeau's pitch was largely positive, it was peppered with boilerplate rhetoric and jabs at the minority Conservative government.

Trudeau accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of ruling through the politics of division and fear, neglecting to take meaningful action on climate change, poverty, and failing to "stick up for” Omar Khadr, who still languishes in a Guantanamo Bay military prison.

During a media scrum that followed Trudeau's arts centre speech and a brief dog sled ride through the forest behind Yukon College, Trudeau continued his barrage against the Conservatives, prefacing his remarks with an apology for being "partisan on this.”

"We have a government that for the past five years has done a very good job of making Canadians believe less in the capacity of their government to help out, to be there for them, to build for the future,” Trudeau said.

"For the past five years, Stephen Harper's greatest success is he's made all of us believe that politicians are no longer in the vision business ... in the dreams business, in the making a better world business (and that) politicians should just be about leaving you alone, to muddle by as best you can.”

Asked about the prospects of improving access to higher education for Canadians, Trudeau offered a glimpse into the federal Liberal Party's yet to be released platform it would ride into the next general election.

"Our leader Michael Ignatieff has said many times, ‘If you get the grades, you get to go,'” said Trudeau. "Now what exactly that means will vary from individual to individual. We need to look at the barriers that exist from individual to individual.”

"As a country, we need to make sure we have the best-educated workforce, the best-educated populace that we possibly can have .... A country of 34 million people will not compete on the world stage unless we're not letting anyone fall by the wayside.”

Asked about ensuring that rights and freedoms protected in the Constitution are extended to all those who choose to make Canada home, Trudeau's answer spoke more to the inherent contradictions conflicting values often evoke in Canada's multicultural landscape.

"‘Do I follow what my parents beliefs are, or do I fit into Canadian society?'” Trudeau asked, taking the perspective of a young, first-generation Canadian. "I think there shouldn't have to be a choice.”

"But the worst thing we can start doing is to model the very kinds of intolerance (some) are attempting to flee,” Trudeau said.

The 39-year-old son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau also offered a glimpse into what it was like growing up with one of Canada's most iconic figures as his father.

"I was 13 when he left politics. I didn't get a lot of him walking home at the end of the day and saying, ‘Oh, René Lévesque really gave me a hard time today about the Constitution,'” Trudeau said. "I didn't get a lot of the details of politics. What I got was conversations about values, conversations about ideals ... I also got extraordinary opportunities to travel with him across this country.”

And does he have any desire to follow in his father's footsteps, beginning with one day leading the Liberal Party?

"Five years, 10 years from now, who knows,” Trudeau said. "Right now, I have a job to do, and I have a federal team that I'm very proud of, and a leader I'm proud to follow in Michael Ignatieff.”