Activists protest Trans Mountain outside Trudeau's hotel in San Francisco

About a dozen climate change activists, including Vanessa Butterworth of Toronto, demonstrated today outside the hotel where the prime minister was holding meetings with top state officials.

They chanted anti-pipeline slogans and held up signs demanding that Trudeau reverse federal approval of the project.

Three of the protesters briefly got inside the hotel and demonstrated with their backs up against a wall directly outside the room where Trudeau met with California Gov. Jerry Brown.

Trudeau has given no indication he's willing to back down on the project. He's said it's in the national interest and his government will see it built one way or another.

But Butterworth said Trudeau will have to say no to Kinder Morgan's expansion of its pipeline between Alberta and Burnaby, B.C. if he wants to be a true climate leader.

Trudeau got a warmer reception from Brown's deputy Gavin Newsom, who thanked the prime minister for his leadership "at a time when that's not lost on many of us in the political sphere out here."

That's been seen as a reference to U.S. President Donald Trump.