Parliament is expected to vote on ratification of the Kyoto Protocol within days, and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has made it clear he will brook no opposition from his restless back bench. But it doesn't really matter. Canada's approval of the international treaty to combat greenhouse-gas emissions will be a symbolic gesture only.

Ottawa's latest version of its Kyoto plan, released last Thursday, looks increasingly like no implementation plan at all. It looks like the first step in a made-in-Canada alternative to Kyoto, one that would still reduce the country's production of the gases believed to cause global warming.

The Liberal government won't admit that, of course. It will continue to pay fealty to the common good of combatting this environmental problem multilaterally. When skeptical Liberal cabinet ministers are asked about the logic of proceeding with Kyoto, they often fall back on the rationale that Canada is supportive of global treaties generally. In other words, this one may appear to make less sense than many, but we'll do it because it's good for global governance.

Except it appears we may not do it anyway. Canada's plan now suggests that the country's biggest polluters will be allowed to miss the treaty's 2012 deadline.

Ottawa's intention -- or its latest intention -- is that the major natural resource industries will be allowed a longer implementation period in "exceptional circumstances," so long as bigger cuts are promised for some time after 2012. Canada's overall responsibility is to reduce emissions by roughly 30 per cent over normal growth levels, or 240 megatonnes. The shortfall supposedly would be made up through means other than industry cuts, such as purchasing international pollution credits.

But even then, Canada appears to have little idea how to cover an already existing shortfall of 60 or so megatonnes. Ottawa hoped to win international recognition for the country's high exports of cleaner forms of energy such as hydroelectricity and natural gas. But other countries balked.

It's becoming harder to avoid this simple conclusion: Canada likely won't meet the Kyoto targets.

What to do? Ottawa's policy now seems to amount to a nod and a wink. It won't mimic the United States by formally dropping out of the accord. But it won't admit that the process for staying in the accord and meeting the mandated targets likely will prove impossible.

Canada's Kyoto mess was completely foreseeable. This file is widely viewed within the federal government as being the worst-handled in years.

The problem began with Mr. Chrétien's promise during the 1997 Kyoto negotiation to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions significantly more than Ottawa had planned originally, in response to a change in the U.S. position. The international pact didn't even take account of population growth, meaning emissions would have to be reduced more in Canada per capita than in other countries with lower birth rates and immigration levels.

Then Ottawa allowed years to pass without taking significant steps toward implementation. In the meantime, the Bush administration decided the pact was unworkable and withdrew, as did Australia. More recently, developing countries -- which produce much of the world's emissions -- have pointedly refused to make early promises to begin reductions of their own in a decade or so.

Even Russia, which stands to benefit from Kyoto, isn't moving quickly toward ratification. What does one call a global pact that doesn't involve most of the globe? There are doubts in Washington, and among some insiders in Ottawa, that Kyoto will ever take effect internationally.

Canada has a responsibility to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions. This country produces only about 2 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases, but is responsible for more per capita than just about any other country.

Many high-tech initiatives to reduce the intensity of emissions -- that is, the amount of pollutants per unit of production -- are under way in the United States, and make good business sense. Billions of dollars are being spent on new research. Interestingly, Ottawa too now seems to be focusing more on "emissions intensity" than on absolute caps.

Canada also needs to press forward more quickly with measures that will be both economically profitable and environmentally responsible. For example, EnCana, the large Calgary-based energy company, is the principal owner of one of the world's major sequestration projects, in which carbon dioxide is pumped underground to force oil to the surface. The effect is doubly positive; more oil is recovered and significant amounts of carbon dioxide, the key greenhouse gas, are used productively. Such projects are supported by the International Energy Agency and the U.S. Energy Department as well as by Ottawa.

Canadian officials hope that sequestration, if applied throughout Western Canada, could reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by as much as 75 megatonnes a year. This would require a major investment in infrastructure, but one that might easily be profitable.

Would the reductions come by 2012? Quite possibly not. But then, even Ottawa may slowly be realizing that the key is to reduce the production of greenhouse-gas emissions in a way that also encourages economic efficiency, not simply to adhere to artificial timelines negotiated some years ago on the back of an envelope.