Career highlights
Former B.C. premier Christy Clark announced Friday she would be resigning as leader of the Liberal party and as a member of the legislative assembly in Kelowna West.
Here is a list of Clark’s political highlights:
— As a child, Clark knocked on doors with her father, Jim Clark, who was running for the provincial Liberals when the party had little support in the province.
— Clark won as student president at Simon Fraser University, later saying it was “the nastiest politics I’ve ever been involved in.”
She won by six votes, but was disqualified for forgetting to pay a small fine because she’d failed to remove campaign material.
— First elected to the provincial legislature in 1996 as an Opposition Liberal MLA in Port Moody.
— Re-elected in 2001 in a Liberal sweep and is appointed deputy premier and education minister.
— Left politics in 2005 to spend time with her family but then made a failed bid to lead the Non-Partisan Association in a run to be mayor of Vancouver.
— Hosted an afternoon radio talk show in Vancouver between 2007 and 2010 before leaving to seek the Liberal leadership when Gordon Campbell quit as premier.
— Clark won leadership race in 2011 and walked directly into the premier’s office.
— Despite predictions of a New Democrat victory, Clark led her party to power in the 2013 election.
— Clark Liberals introduced five consecutive balanced budgets, leading Canada in job and economic growth.
— Gave the go-ahead to the $8.8 billion Site C hydroelectric dam in northeast B.C., reached long-term labour peace with teachers and preserved old-growth forests in the Great Bear Rainforest.
— The Liberals were elected to a minority government in May with 43 seats in the 87-seat legislature but lost a confidence vote after the New Democrats and Greens formed an agreement to govern.