B.C. premier backs northern pipeline projects
Christy Clark works to win confidence at Reform founder’s conference
B.C. Premier Christy Clark, dubbed Friday by Preston Manning as Canada’s “iron snowbird,” made another aggressive attempt to win the confidence of Canada’s conservative movement.
Clark, leader of the B.C. Liberals who has recently recruited several former advisers to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was speaking at the Reform party founder’s annual conference of politicians, strategists and thinkers under the banner: “A Conservative family reunion.”
She boasted of her government’s commitment to family values, which she defined on economic terms, and stressed her support for liquefied natural gas projects and the pipelines needed to distribute the project across northern B.C.
“We support pipelines in British Columbia,” she told her audience in a veiled reference to criticism in Alberta over her on-the-fence position on the proposed Northern Gateway oilsands pipeline to Kitimat, B.C.
Alberta Premier Alison Redford urged Clark last year to embrace Gateway as a project in the national interest.
But Clark, in response to a ques- tion from the oilsands capital city of Fort Mcmurray, said British Columbians still need to see evidence that the economic benefits outweigh the environmental risks.
That case still hasn’t been made, she said, which is why the government is awaiting a National Energy Board decision expected several months after the May 2013 British Columbia election.
But she stressed that B.C. can still be a gateway for Canadian natural resources to booming Asian markets and cited as evidence her government’s support for liquid natural gas, which is far less of an environmental risk because the gas would dissipate quickly after a spill.
“We have a duty to Canada” to ease the flow of products to Asia, she told her audience.
Clark is in the fight of her political life in B.C. due to the challenge from a number of Manning’s former Reform MPS who have moved into provincial politics under ex-mp John Cummins, the B.C. Conservative leader.
She has enlisted Manning and two of the Reform founder’s top MPS, including ex-harper ministers Chuck Strahl and Jay Hill, to blunt the attack from the right.
But so far that hasn’t paid off. Manning said publicly in October that he supports Clark, not Cummins, as the best bet to keep the NDP from taking power. But polls consistently show the B.C. Liberals are well behind the NDP due in part to the erosion of its base caused by Cummins’ support.
Manning tried again at a reception Thursday night where Clark was introduced to conservatives by her new chief of staff, former Harper strategist Ken Boessenkoool.
Manning reminded the audience that Clark is supporting legislation to allow B.C.’S nominees for the Senate to be elected. And he pointed out that the recent budget has been lauded as the most conservative provincial budget in the country.
On Friday, he repeated that flattery before comparing Clark to his former deputy leader Deb Grey, a tough parliamentarian who usually led MPS in the traditional Wednesday singing of the national anthem before question period.
Manning always described Grey as a cross between Canadian singer Anne Murray, whose biggest hit was Snowbird, and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the so-called Iron Lady. “I think we’ve found another Iron Snowbird.”