CLARK CHIMES IN ON KEEPING LIBERALS IN LINE

Rare podcast interview also delves into women in politics — and ambition

One year after quitting the political arena, Christy Clark resurfaced in a podcast interview this week, discussing her legacy as premier and the challenges she faced as a woman leading the B.C. Liberal coalition.

On the legacy side, Clark cited her push to develop an industry based on the export of liquefied natural gas (“we spent, I swear, almost six years trying to get it done”) and getting a good start on building the dam at Site C on the Peace River.

No surprise there. But what was surprising, as Clark noted, was the NDP continuing with Site C and LNG, after disparaging both in opposition.

“When the government changed, I thought ‘oh my gosh, that’s years of work down the drain’ — and then they changed their minds,” as Clark told Liberal party strategist David Herle, proprietor of the Herle Burly website.

“So Site C is going to happen. LNG is going to happen and we were the most successful province in the country for the last three or four years I was premier. Most jobs. Most economic growth.”

Less predictable were Clark’s observations on six years at the helm of the B.C. Liberal coalition.

“It’s a marriage of convenience between federal Conservatives and federal Liberals,” she told the Ontario-based Herle, whose credentials include a stint with prime minister Paul Martin and premier Kathleen Wynne.

Clark hails from the Liberal side of the B.C. coalition, albeit aligned with the budget-balancing, transferpayment reducing Martin as opposed to the more leftleaning Liberals like Wynne.

The deeper dividing line in the B.C. party is on the social side, with liberal Liberals pitted against conservative Liberals.

Even as premier, Clark could move the party only so far in the direction she favoured as a self-styled “feminist” and “champion” of the LGBTQ community.

“I didn’t get to do as much on social issues as I would have liked,” she told Herle. “I’m in favour of gay marriage. I’m in favour of a woman’s right to choose. I’m in favour of supporting transgender bathrooms, and things like that.”

Lots of people in the party were not in favour.

“But we don’t talk about those things, and we don’t execute on those things, because the only way to keep the NDP out of power in this province is if we band together and work together.”

Clark’s rationale sheds light on current B.C. Liberal anxieties about the prospect of proportional representation.

Though Clark herself endorsed PR in the 2009 referendum, many Liberals believe it would split the coalition in two on socially conservative and socially liberal lines.

Another telling exchange unfolded when Herle, drawing on his recent experience with Wynne, asked about “the level of vitriol” directed at women in politics.

Clark said she and Wynne “were not on the same policy page by a long shot.” Still, “I really did respect her ferocity and her dignity, her sense of fairness. She was a good person, worthy of respect.”

Yet during a visit to Ontario before the election, Clark heard from women in particular that they just didn’t like Wynne personally.

“Which was resonant for me,” Clark continued, “because people would say that about me all the time. Not to my face because people were polite. But that was kind of the narrative. And it’s a problem that women have.

“My theory is men get to be nice and likable and competent.

“But for women when you’re nice, people think you’re weak and when you’re strong and competent people don’t like you.”

Case in point?

“My first experience of this was when one of the most prominent columnists in B.C. described me as ambitious. The context in which he situated that word made it sound awful. Like, oh she’s ambitious. The fairy tale picture of the evil stepmother who will do anything to get power. She will crawl over anyone and kill anyone because she’s so ambitious. She ruins the life of the innocent sweet — all the innocent sweet in the world.

“And of course a man needs to come in and rescue and all — end of the story.”

She did not name the offending columnist. But perhaps she was thinking of a column that appeared under my name in The Vancouver Sun on Feb. 20, 2003: “Christy Clark’s ambition is almost like a virus.” She may have a point.

Herle wrapped by asking Clark, who turns 53 this fall, about her future. She’s landed an advisory position with a Vancouver law firm and a seat on the board of Shaw Communications. She also presided at a recent fundraiser for Michael Lee, third-place finisher in the provincial leadership race.

Might she run federally at some point?

“After this interview I’m never going to get back into politics. It’s all over,” replied Clark. “I want to be involved in helping other people, especially women, to be successful in politics. But I think that’s going to be the extent of it.

“I don’t have much interest in going back. Politics is so hard. It’s so fulfilling and it’s so meaningful.

“You can’t get to the end of wanting to do it after a while, because it is just not easy, as you know.”

Herle: “Well I know a ‘no’ when I hear one and that wasn’t it.”

Let him have the last word, lest anything I might write be interpreted as insinuating she still harbours ambitions.

I’m in favour of a woman’s right to choose . ... But we don’t talk about those things ... because the only way to keep the NDP out of power in this province is if we band together.