Hours after arriving on the Indonesian island of Bali for global climate change talks, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion took a thinly veiled dig at Ottawa by calling its position a "recipe for failure."

The former environment minister criticized the Tories on Tuesday for saying they won't accept a climate deal unless it includes major polluters like the United States, China and India.

"This everything-or-nothing attitude is a recipe for failure," Dion told a conference of municipal leaders in Bali. "It's certainly not enough to say, 'I will do something only if the others do something.'"

He described the current government's plan as one that would meet Canada's Kyoto targets but two decades behind schedule.

Dion arrived at the UN climate conference on Tuesday after a three-day tour of Canada's North and pointed to growing problems there from global warming, such as melting permafrost.

About 190 countries have gathered in Bali to work toward a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The two-week conference wraps up on Friday.

In an interview with CBC News on Tuesday morning, Dion said he wasn't at the conference to focus on his party's "deep disagreement" with the environmental policies of the current government.

But he added, "It's very sad to see that Canada was a leader two years ago to bring the world together, and now Canada is saying exactly the opposite."

The Liberal leader also met Tuesday with Canadian environmentalists, who say the government has refused to meet with them even though Ottawa's delegation includes an oil company and other business executives.

Environmentalists have accused the Tories of deliberately undermining the climate talks, with several provincial governments, including Ontario and Quebec, and a number of foreign delegations echoing their criticism.

With files from the Canadian Press