The Kyoto accord on global warming takes effect next week, and the heat is on Prime Minister Paul Martin and his Liberal government to produce a plan for meeting Canada's international obligations.
The Liberal government did very little on the global warming file for years, perhaps hoping the agreement would die before it had to make any hard decisions about how to curb the use of oil and gas in Canada. Mr Martin, the former finance minister, was hardly a champion of greenhouse gas reductions in his years in cabinet. When he took over from the former prime minister, Jean Chretien, as Liberal leader in late 2003, he was already constructing an exit policy for himself on Kyoto.
"What I have said very clearly is you need a plan to determine whether in fact you can meet those targets," Mr Martin said when he was asked repeatedly about the accord.
He started sounding a little greener last year during the closely-fought federal election campaign. Desperate to attract voters from the left, the prime minister promised that Canada would honour its Kyoto commitments.
That won't be easy. Back in 1997 in an all-night negotiating session in Kyoto, Canada agreed to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 6% below 1990 levels by 2012. At the time, the Liberal government had little notion how Canada would ever achieve that goal - a state of optimistic ignorance that persisted for years.
Canada's energy consumption has steadily increased since 1997. By some estimates, Canada will have to reduce its use of fossil fuels by 30% to meet the Kyoto target.
"Despite good words and good intentions, the federal government has not yet delivered real reductions," Elizabeth May, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, said in a recent report.
"Unless the 2005 budget and next Parliamentary session deliver real progress," she added, "Canada's reputation and performance will be an international embarrassment."
How to do it? Mr Martin, who heads a minority government, doesn't want to renege on a major promise, and he and his officials are now scrambling to cobble together a credible plan.
Over the years, the federal government has wasted millions on brochures and public education campaigns that gently prodded Canadians to reduce their use of energy. Proposals for more significant action died amid squabbling between government departments with duelling agendas.
The new measures should be revealed sometime this month, probably in the federal budget. They are expected to include subsidies and tax incentives to get ordinary Canadians to buy hybrid cars or solar energy systems, and to get business and industry to reduce emissions.
Canada, however, will have difficulty living up to Kyoto without resorting to spending millions on credits from countries that have exceeded their targets. This is legitimate under the accord, but writing cheques to star Kyoto performers will be a tough sell to Canadian taxpayers.
Canadians may not be as immediately threatened by global warming as some nations, especially the small island states that could disappear under rising sea levels. But the changes that scientists have predicted will come with global warming may already be happening here, especially in the north. Polar bears are having trouble finding food because thin ice is forcing them back to land before they can fatten up on seals. Some Inuit have expressed fears that their villages will have to be relocated.
But polls show that many don't understand how their own consumer habits - like driving gas guzzling SUVs - are related to increased emissions that are trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere.
Canada is not the only country having trouble living up to Kyoto. Japan is also behind. As Mr Martin noted on a recent trip to that country, the protocol has a provision that allows countries that don't meet the 2012 deadline to carry over those obligations to subsequent stages of the agreement. Perhaps the Liberals will argue that is the same thing as "honouring" Kyoto.