The Chrétien government has disregarded all the straightforward rules of making and selling public policy with the Kyoto Protocol.

These are the rules: Define the problem. Get the public to accept that the problem exists. Propose a solution. Identify yourself with the solution. Do it. Take the consequences.

Now apply these rules to the Chrétien government and Kyoto. For starters, the problem of climate change remains murky. True, polls show that Canadians broadly favour doing something about climate change. But these polls are as useful as ones asking if people want lower taxes without suggesting which spending programs must be chopped. In other words, the polls on climate change aren't terribly reliable as a guide to what the public knows or will accept.

There's also the inescapable problem of climate change being incremental and long term. Action today won't lead to results tomorrow, or next year, or even next decade. And if the problem is so urgent, why is 75 per cent of the world not in the Kyoto Protocol?

So the definition remains murky. So does the public's acceptance that a problem exists, or at least that something has to be done about it now.

Assume that the government could build a case on such murky premises. The next step is to propose a solution.

Here's where the government has things backward. A solution is not a target such as reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to 6 per cent below 1990 levels, as Canada nominally agreed to do when negotiating Kyoto. A solution involves measures, laws, regulations, incentives -- concrete steps -- toward achieving a target.

The best planners in the world cannot predict precisely how proposed solutions will unfold. That's why everyone should take with a grain of salt all the predictions about job losses and gains, the impact on economic growth, the boost for new technologies. Government departments disagree among themselves on these predictions, to say nothing of disagreements between advocates and critics of Kyoto.

But it's impossible to have an intelligent debate about proposed solutions unless solutions are proposed. Thus far, the Chrétien government has not proposed any solutions, preferring, instead, to say that these will unfold only after Canada has ratified the treaty.

To repeat: A target is not a solution. Without proposals, no intelligent debate can unfold about effectiveness, cost, means and ends. It's like saying: We favour the target of free trade with the United States without revealing what's in the agreement, that is, the solution.

Having failed to outline a solution to Kyoto despite years of consultations, negotiations, policy papers, roundtables, newspaper advertisements and federal-provincial meetings, it's little wonder the government is breaking another rule: identifying itself with a solution. Instead, it says there will be more consultations.

Having identified itself with a target but not a solution, the government can hardly convince the public that it has the answers to what remains a murkily defined problem.

Then there's the rule about doing it. Propose a solution, and do it. Obviously, nothing can be done until the government figures out what to do, and it hasn't figured that out yet. Every week, a new leak surfaces about this or that idea, and previous policy papers have outlined broad options. But leaks and options are a long way from doing anything.

Which brings us to the final rule: Take the consequences. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien will be gone in 17 months, or maybe sooner. It will fall to his successor to deal with the heavy lifting about Kyoto, which explains why Paul Martin has been twisting and turning.

Mr. Martin's success as finance minister, greatly assisted by Mr. Chrétien, was to restore stability to the nation's finances. He followed all the rules of sound public policy.

He identified a problem, and got the Canadian public to accept that the deficit was, indeed, a national problem. He proposed a series of concrete solutions, identified himself (and the government) with those solutions, produced results, and lived with the political consequences, which in this instance proved entirely positive.

Having followed the rules in the deficit struggle, Mr. Martin can easily see, as an outsider now but an eventual prime minister, how all the rules are being disregarded on the Kyoto file.

He will have to pick up the Kyoto pieces.
jsimpson@globeandmail.ca