OTTAWA -- The House of Commons voted overwhelmingly in favour of committing Canada to the Kyoto Protocol yesterday, kicking off a process that could have a profound impact on the lives of Canadians, starting in the next budget.

The Bloc Québécois and New Democrats joined the Liberal majority in the Commons to push through a motion to ratify Kyoto by a vote of 195-77, over the objections of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives.

The vote gives Prime Minister Jean Chrétien the endorsement he was seeking before he officially commits Canada to the controversial deal before the year end.

"It's a great day today: I am passing Kyoto," said Mr. Chrétien, who wants to bind Canada to the deal to slow global warming as part of his legacy.

"All you guys some weeks ago were telling me that I was going to hit the wall, [but] I have the NDP, I have all the Liberal Party [and] the Bloc [onside]. . . . It's a great day for Canada, a great day for the environment and a great day for the future of our kids."

Mr. Chrétien will delay officially ratifying Kyoto -- a move that requires him and four other ministers to sign an order to that effect -- until the Senate votes. The Liberal-dominated Senate is expected to approve the legislation soon.

Official Opposition Leader Stephen Harper of the Canadian Alliance said Canadians will rue the day Kyoto was approved because Ottawa has underestimated its cost to taxpayers and businesses.

"It was an incredibly stupid decision and without precedent to adopt an international accord with enormous [potential] economic ramifications . . . for this country, and to do so without a plan," he said. "When we don't know what to expect, we should expect the worst."

Canadians will see the first impact of the Kyoto Protocol in the 2003 federal budget, expected in February, where Ottawa will start doling out more incentives to consumers and small and medium-sized businesses to retrofit homes and commercial buildings to make them more energy efficient.

Ottawa also will blitz Canadians with ads and exhortations to curb energy use while slowly ramping up Kyoto spending to an estimated $1-billion a year by 2008, the first year of treaty compliance.
"Canadians are going to see . . . a certain amount of jawboning," Environment Minister David Anderson said yesterday.

Car prices may rise if Ottawa is successful in goading automakers to increase fuel efficiency. Mr. Anderson said Canada will work with like-minded jurisdictions, such as California, to press for this.

"I would like to see a 25-per-cent increase in fuel efficiency before this decade is out," Mr. Anderson said.

But critics warn that Kyoto's greatest impact will be hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, eroded economic growth and spiralling government spending to cover Canada's obligations under the deal. They warn that gasoline and other energy prices will rise as businesses pass on the costs of meeting Kyoto to consumers.

The Kyoto treaty is an international effort to slow global warming by reducing world-wide emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, which are given off primarily by burning fossil fuels, including oil and coal.

Business groups have warned that the deal will cost Canada as many as 450,000 jobs and tens of billions of dollars in lost economic growth. Ottawa has countered with forecasts saying the deal will cost only 60,000 to 90,000 in forgone jobs over the next decade and will trim economic growth by $4.4-billion to $7.7-billion.

The United States has rejected Kyoto because of fears that its targets to curb energy use would hurt the U.S. economy. Corporate Canada fears it will be placed at a disadvantage because it may have to spend more than $4-billion to help cover Kyoto targets.

A 67-page draft plan Ottawa released in November envisions several hundred of Canada's most energy-intensive businesses shouldering responsibility for nearly one-quarter of the emissions reductions.

Ottawa moved this week to assuage business fears by offering to cap the cost that corporate Canada would have to pay to cut greenhouse-gas emissions at $15 per tonne. But business said it wants a written guarantee that it will have to bear no more than 55 megatonnes of the targeted 240-megatonne reduction.

Business also wants a breakdown by sector of how much it will have to do to comply.

"Ratification was really just a political act, and there's still a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done to pull together a plan that makes sense for Canadians," said Nancy Hughes Anthony, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, which has 170,000 members across the country.

"The discussion is moving in the right direction, but we should have been having this discussion a year ago, and not days before ratification."

Ottawa wants individual Canadians to cut their annual greenhouse-gas emissions by one tonne, or 20 per cent, by cutting energy use around the home. It will work to encourage energy-efficiency retrofits of one-fifth of the country's existing housing stock.

But Mr. Anderson said that Ottawa will not ramp up subsidies for retrofits quickly, because it does not want to create a stampede of inexperienced renovators into the market.

"We're also going to see incentive programs that have to be done reasonably carefully so we don't have three times as many people insulating their house this year over last year because it leads to shoddy workmanship."