Time is right for a new leader: Clark
Former premier feels ‘fantastic,’ but Liberals had to stop ‘grieving’
Christy Clark woke early Friday morning, summoned her old friend and most trusted political adviser to her side and took a long walk along the Penticton waterfront to decide her political future.
The sun was rising over Okanagan Lake at 5:30 a.m. when Clark said she and former chief of staff Mike McDonald — dressed in shorts, T-shirts and baseball hats — talked through a move she’d been debating since election night: resigning as B.C. Liberal leader.
“The sun was beautiful, it was warm, and in Penticton you breathe the Okanagan in, it’s just the way the air is up there,” Clark said in a wide-ranging interview with Postmedia News on Monday. “And I realized, I’m going to go into that caucus meeting and I’m
going to tell (Liberal MLAs) I’m not staying.”
Her B.C. Liberal caucus had asked her a day earlier, last Thursday, to stay on. But the former premier said she saw troubling signs the party hadn’t accepted its defeat at the hands of an NDP-Green alliance.
“You know, six years of looking these guys in the eye, I knew it was time for me to go,” she said of her MLAs. “I knew it. You can just tell, and a leader should know when it’s
her time to leave. I just don’t admire people who hang on because they believe they are irreplaceable, because nobody is irreplaceable.
“They were grieving, not being in government anymore, and they were having trouble moving on. And what they need is they need a leadership campaign to refresh and energize and get everybody thinking about what’s next.”
Clark’s abrupt announcement nonetheless caught many Liberals by surprise.
They’d expected her to serve as Opposition leader at least until the spring, with the hope the NDP-Green alliance might crumble and she could lead the Liberals into a snap election.
Publicly, Clark has steadfastly insisted for weeks that she was ready to tackle the role of Opposition leader after losing her premiership.
But Clark said the decision to leave now was part of a process she began election night, May 9, when the Liberals fell one seat short of the 44 ridings required to form a majority government. She debated resigning immediately, but at a caucus meeting May 16 her MLAs unanimously asked her to stay.
Clark said she next decided to quit on June 29, after the NDP and Greens toppled her government with a non-confidence vote and Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon rejected her recommendation for a new election in favour of asking John Horgan to form government.
“The night the lieutenant-governor decided not to call an election, I was going to go out and tell (the media) that I was going to step down, but I was persuaded not to do that,” she said. “And it was the right thing to do because it would have just been chaos for the party. There’s a good time to go and a bad time to go, and that would have been a bad time to go. We needed to move to opposition.
“Somebody needed to open the office and hire the staff. You don’t want to just walk away and leave a mess.”
It’s also become clear, Clark said, that Green Leader Andrew Weaver is more committed to propping up the new NDP government than she’d thought, dashing hopes for a quick election.
“I think I did underestimate Andrew Weaver’s willingness to go along to get along,” she said. “He’s really decided he wants to be a part of the NDP … and that has really given the new government a lot more stability because there doesn’t seem to be anything they can do to throw a wrench into that relationship.
“Given we’re not likely to have an election, now is the time to have a leadership (race).”
“We’ve got to get this out of the way and our party has got to be ready,” she added. “Our caucus needs the energy. We have to learn to be in opposition. They’ve got to move from playing defence every day to playing offence, and a change in leadership is going to help them get there.”
Clark’s resignation as Liberal leader is effective Friday. Her resignation as MLA for Kelowna West is expected shortly after, though not on the same day. Premier Horgan has up to six months to call a byelection, giving the NDP government more breathing room on the votes needed to pass its fall legislative agenda.
Clark said she rejected the idea of continuing to serve as an MLA. “Our new leader is not going to need the old leader hanging around,” she said. “I think that new leader deserves a chance to set her or his stamp on this party.”
She said she has no immediate plans, won’t endorse a new Liberal leadership candidate and is not interested in running for federal politics.
At what was her last media conference Monday, she again trumpeted her government’s strong economic record and job growth statistics, though major projects she kick-started like the Site C dam may be halted by the new NDP administration.
Clark said she hopes her next job also has an element of public service, but it won’t be a return to politics.
“I’ll never have a job as fulfilling as premier,” she said. “It is the pinnacle of being able to try to do good in the world for me in British Columbia, and there’s no other job in British Columbia that will allow you that much.”
“Politics,” she added, “is not a happy business — it’s pretty punishing, but I don’t want to have a happy empty life. I want to have a fulfilling life where I feel like I’m helping people.”
After telling her caucus Friday of her intention to resign, Clark that weekend drove back to Vancouver with McDonald. It brought her political career full circle. One of her first political jobs was in 1991, driving a van — borrowed from politician Clive Tanner — with McDonald across the Interior recruiting candidates for then-B.C. Liberal leader Gordon Wilson.
“Driving home together, five hours, me and Mike we talked about that, driving around the province in Clive’s van, and it was like going back in time for the two of us,” she said. “I’ve known him since I was 20. He ran my leadership campaign. He ran the 2013 election. He was my chief of staff, and been my best political friend all my life. So it was a great way to end it for me.”
Clark said she has no regrets about leaving now.
“I feel fantastic. I feel like I get to be me again. I feel good about that.”
I’ll never have a job as fulfilling as premier … It is the pinnacle of being able to try to do good in the world for me in British Columbia.