A Conservative MP says a new global agency isn't the answer in fighting global warming.

"We don't really have to set up a lot of new groups," Bob Mills, chair of the House of Commons environmental committee, told CTV's Question Period on Sunday.

He noted that British Prime Minister Tony Blair set up the G8-plus-five dialogue group. That group includes the G8 countries plus Mexico, China, Brazil, India and South Africa.

"The main thing is, is that we get action, that we start dealing with the solutions to climate change," he said.

What France's President Jacques Chirac proposed on the weekend is creating an agency that had the ability to define and possibly enforce environmental rules.

Canada is currently on target to miss its Kyoto Accord target of a six per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2012.

The target is 563 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents, while Canada produced 758 Mt of such emissions in 2004. If Canada misses its target, it will have a penalty tacked on in the next climate treaty.

Liberal environment critic David McGuinty told Question Period that the enforceability of the accord needs to be strengthened.

This government is, although it won't admit it, is actually withdrawing Canada from the Kyoto agreement by stealth, by a thousand cuts," he said -- a position that Mills challenged.

"This is not another dialogue group of the kind that Bob just referred to. It is important now to look, in the future, as to how we're going to enforce the greenhouse gas reductions," McGuinty said.

"There may be 168 countries signing Kyoto, but just the one atmosphere."

NDP environment critic Nathan Cullen told Question Period, "If there's any country in the world that needs help and policing, it's Canada."

Baird's views

Question Period host Craig Oliver asked Environment Minister John Baird, who hastily went to Paris for a conference held after the Friday release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, if he thought it was impossible to reach the Kyoto target. If not, what was possible?

"I think what Stephane Dion and the Liberal party planned to do all the time is to spend billions of dollars of Canadian taxpayers' money on hot air credits from countries like Russia where no greenhouse gases will actually be reduced," Baird said.

"What we want to do is show Canadians what can be done. Canadians have heard enough about why we can't do things or how it can't be done. What we want to focus on is the action we can take."

Baird said regulation of industry would be required, however, it wouldn't involve a carbon tax.

"No. Our plan involves industrial regulation. That's I think the best approach to take. And that's part of the plan, but it's probably the biggest part. That's important. So, too, is clean energy."

Baird noted the Conservative government has made three major announcements on clean energy in January.

Media analysis

The journalists' panel on Question Period felt that the Conservatives were essentially trying to neutralize as the environment as a political issue.

When Stephane Dion became Liberal leader, he ran on a green platform. The Conservatives are running ads attacking Dion on his record.

For his part, Dion has said of Prime Minister Stephen Harper: "He is still a climate change denier."

Harper savaged the Kyoto Accord in a 2002 fundraising letter for the then-Canadian Alliance party that he led.

While only four per cent of respondents rated the environment as the most important issue facing the country a year ago, it was the top issue in a recent Strategic Counsel poll done for CTV and The Globe and Mail newspaper.

"Everybody's read the polls," said CTV's Roger Smith. "And I think the Conservatives are desperate to neutralize this as a political issue before the next campaign."

John Ibbitson, a political columnist for the Globe, said if the Conservatives handle this properly, many Canadians who don't want to give up their SUVs or turn their thermostats down might say that Harper's done what he could.

"And here are three parties who would take us back to a pre-industrial age. If he comes up with something cogent and coherent ... he has a chance to marginalize those three parties."

People interviewed near Ottawa's Rideau Canal -- which has finally frozen after an abnormally warm start to the winter -- sounded like politicians on all sides were just making a bunch of self-serving noise.

With a report from CTV's Roger Smith