The Harper government may be staring down the barrel of an unprecedented Constitutional battle if it goes ahead with its refusal to respect an opposition bill calling on Canada to respect its Kyoto engagements.

Once the Senate approves the bill, the Conservatives will have 60 days to come up with a plan to bring the country’s emissions in line with the Kyoto protocol.

"The debate about whether Canada will comply with Kyoto is now over," Stewart Elgie, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, told the Canwest News Service. "Parliament has answered yes. The only question now is how we will do it."

But the Conservatives have hinted they’re considering ignoring the law outright and facing either the political or legal consequences that would no doubt follow.

"It's really a toothless tiger,” Environment Minister John Baird said. “All it does is talk about more plans and more studies … we need real action."

The Liberals, for their part, have said Harper’s refusal amounts to nothing less than the usurping of legislative powers by the government - a "coup d'état", as they've termed it.

"The prime minister can't act like an emperor and decide he'll respect one law but not another one he doesn't like," Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez, who introduced the bill adopted Wednesday, said. "He can't do that. This is a democracy. Democracy has expressed itself."

Still, the Liberals weren't willing to commit yesterday to defeating the government should it follow through on its threat to ignore the bill.

“We're not there yet. We'll see,” the Liberals' deputy leader, Michael Ignatieff, said. “It's altogether possible. I'm not ruling anything out.”

Despite their best efforts to block the legislation, the Conservatives lost the vote 161-113 in the House of Commons yesterday.

Conservatives have repeatedly said it’s impossible for Canada to reduce its emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012. Under past Liberal governments, emissions grew to nearly 35% above 1990 levels and the Harper government has instead opted for its own slower-paced, “made in Canada” approach to emissions reduction.

The Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson warns the opposition is now playing a “very dangerous game” by forcing the government’s hand on Kyoto.

“A credible number for buying sufficient carbon credits or sponsoring carbon-reduction initiatives overseas, which is the only way the target could be met at this late date, is in the range of $20-billion,” Ibbitson said. “To do that would require cancelling many of the initiatives — from the purchase of military equipment to subsidizing child care — of recent years and/or taking the federal government into deficit.”

With files from Canadian Press

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