TORONTO - Ontario's climate-change plan shouldn't hinge on the outcome of October's election despite the Liberal party's desire to make the environment a key ballot-box question, prominent environmentalists say.

The Liberals will spend the next few weeks revealing various parts of their climate-change plan, but Premier Dalton McGuinty has already said many of the initiatives will depend on the re-election of the Liberals.

"There will be some things that we will be able to move on right away and other things will be longer term,'' McGuinty said Monday, being coy on when the Liberals will outline their plans.

"Be patient. It's on the way.''

McGuinty's stance has upset environmentalists like Keith Stewart, manager of the climate-change program with the World Wildlife Fund, who says the issue of reducing greenhouse gases is far too important to become a political football in the Oct. 10 election.

The Liberals could take steps now to phase out coal-fired plants, reduce harmful emissions through California-style tailpipe standards, and improve the energy efficiency of Ontario buildings rather than reducing the much-anticipated climate-change plan into a series of election promises, Stewart said.

"If this is simply a campaign platform, that's not good enough when you've been in power for four years,'' Stewart said. "They've had the opportunity, they've had the resources of the entire civil service to work on this.''

During that period, Stewart said the Liberals haven't even found the time to enact the regulation that would make clotheslines legal, reducing the reliance on energy-gobbling dryers.

"They passed a law which gives them the ability to do that and they haven't even used that little power,'' he said. "It's literally a stroke of a pen. It's a small thing but it's kind of indicative.''

Mark Winfield, director of environmental governance at the Pembina Institute, said people are tired of the lip service given to the environment and want action on climate change before the election.

At a time when McGuinty has called climate change the "defining challenge of our generation,'' Winfield said the province is spending a record amount of money expanding Ontario highways.

"That's going to be one of the key tests -- is there some actual substance delivered here, as opposed to another announcement saying, `We're going to think about something,''' said Winfield, who is joining with more than a dozen other environmental organizations to call for the Liberals to act on climate change now.

"That's been the pattern we've been seeing around this.''

But Nelson Wiseman, political science professor at the University of Toronto, said the Liberals want to make the environment an election issue because they feel green-minded voters will give them an edge over the Conservatives.

With polls showing the environment nudging out health care as the top priority of voters, Wiseman said the Liberals will be emphasizing their green plans as they try to deflect attention away from election promises they didn't keep.

"They want to have something that's not just defence -- they want some offence,'' Wiseman said. "They think on the environment they can play offence and the Conservatives can't.''

Conservative Leader John Tory is promising to put scrubbers on coal plants and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 10 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 if he's elected in October.

There is no doubt that the state of the environment is top of mind for voters, Tory said. But he said the Liberals don't have a monopoly on the issue.

"For Dalton McGuinty, this has become a sort of political striptease -- something to wedge voters on,'' Tory said. "He's done nothing and said nothing about climate change in four years. The voters will see through this.''

NDP Leader Howard Hampton, who is promising to meet tough Kyoto targets within five years, said the Liberals don't have any credibility on the environment after they broke their 2003 election promise to shut down coal plants by this year.

"This will be more promises from the ultimate promise-breaker,'' he said. "I don't know why anyone would believe what they're promising now.''