CLARK CALLS IT QUITS
Christy Clark has announced her departure as B.C. Liberal party leader effective Aug. 4 and will also resign as MLA for Kelowna West, setting the stage for a byelection. See video at vancouversun.com and story on page
Christy Clark’s surprise resignation Friday as leader of the B.C. Liberal party and MLA will give Premier John Horgan’s government some breathing room in the legislature and time to govern as the Liberals find a permanent leader.
Clark, mid-morning Friday, issued a statement that she had told her caucus during a meeting in Penticton that she would step down as party leader, effective Aug. 4. She also plans to resign her Kelowna West seat in the legislature.
“Serving as premier and serving the people of British Columbia for the past six and a half years has been an incredible honour and privilege,” Clark said in a statement, which, along with a letter to Liberal party members, was her only communication with the public Friday.
Her departure from the legislature (she did not give a specific date Friday) will reduce opposition ranks to 42 seats versus the 44 seats held by the NDP government, combined with Green-party support, reducing the risk it will fall on a confidence vote.
Horgan has up to six months to call a byelection in her riding.
The Liberal caucus selected Rich Coleman, longtime MLA for Langley and key Clark deputy during her six-and-a-half years as premier, as its interim leader.
The Liberals will be without a permanent leader for anywhere from three months to a year while it goes through a leadership contest to replace Clark, said Coleman, who spoke to the media outside the party’s Penticton caucus meeting. Coleman said he’s informed the Liberal caucus he has no initial intention to run for the permanent job.
In her letter to the party, Clark said: “I love our party and our province with all my heart,” and expressed pride that “together, we have achieved so much” including the Liberal’s 2013 comeback election victory and positioning B.C. as a leading economy in Canada.
“I am certain that British Columbia’s best days, and our party’s are still ahead of us,” Clark wrote in the statement, where she also said she is “excited to see the renewed engagement that will strengthen and energize our party as we choose the next leader.”
That leadership race will be touched off by a meeting of the B.C. Liberal party executive, which must be called within 28 days, according to a letter to members issued Friday by party president Sharon White.
Before being defeated in a confidence motion June 29, Clark said she intended to stay on to take “whatever job voters give me and the House gives me.”
After the confidence vote, which resulted in Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon asking Horgan, with his Green party-backed support agreement, to govern, Clark said she would stay on as long as she had the backing of her opposition caucus.
Coleman told reporters Clark still did have the support of that caucus, but she decided it was in the best interest of the party to give it a clean start now.
“It is her decision, and she’s got so much class that she’s decided she’s going to do this for us,” Coleman said, “give us an opportunity to go through a leadership process without acrimony or issues.”
Clark was first elected as a B.C. Liberal MLA in 1996 and was one of then-leader Gordon Campbell’s fiercest battlers on the opposition benches before his election to the premiership in 2001.
She was also one of Campbell’s key cabinet members when his government made its controversial moves, serving as education minister when the government broke its contract with teachers over class sizes, which resulted in a 15-year legal battle that the previous government finally lost in the Supreme Court of Canada.
Coleman characterized Friday as a “tough day for our family, our B.C. Liberal family.”
While no one stepped forward Friday to declare intentions to run, Coleman said he informed caucus he would not seek the leadership and if he changed his mind later, would step down.
Coleman said his immediate task will be to lead the caucus in selecting Opposition critics, which will be made known within the next couple of weeks, to battle back against government in a fall sitting of the legislature.
“You’re going to see a remarkable opposition,” Coleman said. “We’re going to focus on what’s important to British Columbians,” meaning jobs, the economy.
However, the leadership race could be a distraction for the Liberals until at least the spring, said veteran political scientist Norman Ruff, which “buys (the government) a bit more time.”
“You won’t have Christy Clark sitting in the house with her finger on the trigger, between now and February,” said Ruff, a professor emeritus at the University of Victoria, who was surprised because it looked to him like she was testing the waters of opposition.
“But I guess that’s how you’d sum up today: Christy Clark took her finger off the trigger.”
That Clark didn’t stick around for the mini-budget the NDP government will have to bring down in September, and full budget in February, “prime opportunities for the government to fall,” was also a surprise to political scientist Hamish Telford, of the University of the Fraser Valley.
“Going from premier to leader of the opposition was surely a letdown for her, but the NDP have a very precarious grip on power and I thought that under the circumstances, she would stick around, the party would want her to stick around,” for those budgets, Telford said.
However, Telford said the NDP’s grace period will be short, “because eventually a byelection will have to be called in Kelowna West, and the Liberals will almost certainly win the seat again.”
From the governing side, Premier Horgan and Green party Leader Andrew Weaver stepped back from politics with gracious statements about Clark’s commitment to public service.
“We take up the call of public service because we want to make this province a better place,” Horgan said.
“While we represented two different political parties, Ms. Clark and I are united in the belief that, working together, we can build a better future for British Columbia. ... As an MLA and as premier, Ms. Clark fought passionately for what she believed in. I wish her all the best in her future endeavours.”
Weaver also commended her service as a “fierce advocate for British Columbia, here at home and around the world.”
You won’t have Christy Clark sitting in the house with her finger on the trigger, between now and February.