Christy Clark

Clark was first elected to the legislative assembly in the 1996 election, representing the riding of Port Moody-Burnaby Mountain.[12] During the next five years, she served as the Official Opposition critic for the environment, children and families and for the public service. She also served as the campaign co-chair for the BC Liberals during the 2001 election, in which the party won 77 of 79 seats in the legislative assembly.

Following the BC Liberal Party's election victory in 2001, Premier Gordon Campbell appointed Clark Minister of Education and Deputy Premier.[13][14] She brought in a number of changes that were claimed to increase accountability, strengthen parental power in the decision-making process, and provide parents greater choice and flexibility in the school system. These changes were unpopular amongst teachers, school board members, opposition politicians, and union officials who argued that the decision not to fund the pay increases agreed to by the government resulted in funding gaps. The changes made were challenged by the BC Teacher's Federation, and were later found to be unconstitutional.[15]

As Education Minister, Clark sought to increase the independence of the BC College of Teachers against heavy opposition from the British Columbia Teachers' Federation.[16][17] In 2002 the BC Liberals and Education Minister Christy Clark introduced Bills 27 & 28 forcing teachers back to work and banning collective bargaining. In 2011 the BC Supreme Court found Minister Clark's decision to do so unconstitutional.[18] Clark was deputy premier at the time of the privatization of BC Rail and resulting scandal.[19] Clark was also the co-chair of the 2001 Liberal campaign, which included a platform that specifically promised not to sell BC Rail.[20] In 2009, Michael Bolton, defence attorney in the Basi-Virk trial, alleged that Clark had participated in the scandal by providing government information to lobbyist Erik Bornmann. These allegations were never proven or tested in court.[21] Dave Basi and Bob Virk, Liberal Party insiders were charged for accepting benefits from one of the bidders.[22] Clark has rebuffed talk of her links to the scandal as "smear tactics". At the time of the raids and associated warrants, her then-husband Mark Marissen was visited at home by the RCMP.[23] Her husband was also not under investigation, and was told that he might have been the "innocent recipient" of documents then in his possession.[24]

In 2004, Clark was appointed Minister of Children and Family Development after Minister Gordon Hogg was forced to resign. On September 17, 2004, Clark quit provincial politics and did not seek re-election in the 2005 provincial election. She declared she wanted to spend more time with her three-year-old son.[11]

On August 31, 2005, Clark announced that she would seek the nomination of the Non-Partisan Association (NPA) to run for mayor in the Vancouver Civic Elections against local councillor Sam Sullivan.[11] On September 24, 2005, she lost the NPA's mayoral nomination to Sullivan by 69 votes out of 2,100 cast. Sullivan was subsequently elected Mayor of Vancouver[25] and in 2013 was elected a Liberal MLA while Clark was premier.

As the 2013 general election approached, polls showed that Clark was one of the least popular premiers in Canada. Two months prior to the election, The Province newspaper's front page featured a column by pundit Michael Smyth with the banner headline: "If This Man Kicked A Dog He Would Still Win The Election."[60] However, Clark ran a "tightly-focused campaign that centred on jobs, LNG, and a 'debt free' BC" During the leaders' televised debate, Clark attacked NDP leader Adrian Dix for his "waffling position on the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion". Dix's strategy of taking the "high road", similar to Jack Layton's successful approach in the 2011 federal election, left him vulnerable to "relentless [BC] Liberal attacks on the economic competence of his party".[56]

Clark defied pollster predictions by leading her party to victory, its fourth consecutive mandate but her first, in the May 13, 2013, provincial election reversing a 20-point lead held by the BC NDP at the beginning of the campaign. However, she suffered personal defeat in Vancouver-Point Grey, losing her seat to NDP candidate David Eby by a margin of 785 votes. According to parliamentary precedent, she was entitled to remain premier, but had to win a by-election in order to sit in the Legislative Assembly. She did not rule out running in a riding outside the Lower Mainland in order to get back into the chamber, telling The Globe and Mail that she believed one reason she lost her own riding was that she was devoting so much time to serving the entire province.[61]

On June 4, Clark announced she would run in a by-election for the safe Liberal seat of Westside-Kelowna to re-enter the Legislative Assembly. The incumbent MLA, government whip Ben Stewart, resigned in Clark's favour.[62] Clark won the by-election on July 10, 2013, taking more than 60 per cent of the vote over NDP candidate Carole Gordon.[63]

Under Clark, the party charted a more centrist outlook while continuing its recent tradition of being a coalition of federal Liberal and federal Conservative supporters. She immediately raised the minimum wage from $8/hour to $10.25/hour and introduced a province-wide Family Day similar to Ontario's. Clark became premier during the aftermath of the 2008–09 recession, and continued to hold the line on government spending, introducing two deficit budgets before a balanced one for the 2013–14 fiscal year, which included a tax hike on high-income British Columbians.

Clark's government sought to take advantage of BC's liquified natural gas (LNG) reserves, positioning the budding LNG industry as a major economic development opportunity over the next decade. While the final years of Gordon Campbell's administration had seen far-reaching and progressive environmental legislation enacted, Clark was more measured in her approach to environmental policy. While continuing with BC's first-in-North-America carbon tax, she promised to freeze the rate during the 2013 election and her LNG development aspirations seemed to contradict greenhouse gas emissions targets set by the Campbell government in 2007. She also announced in 2012 that any future pipeline that crosses BC would have to meet five conditions that included environmental requirements and Aboriginal consultation. Controversially, she indicated that one of her five conditions would be that BC receives its "fair share" of any revenues that accrue from increased pipeline and tanker traffic. This has put her in direct conflict with the province of Alberta, who sought increased market access for its bitumen through BC ports, yet adamantly refuse any arrangement which would see BC receive any royalties.

In May 2014, Clark gave a formal apology for 160 historical racist and discriminatory policies imposed against Chinese-Canadians:

While the governments which passed these laws and policies acted in a manner that [was] lawful at the time, today this racist discrimination is seen by British Columbians — represented by all members of the legislative assembly — as unacceptable and intolerable. The entire legislative assembly acknowledges the perseverance of Chinese Canadians that was demonstrated with grace and dignity throughout our history while being oppressed by unfair and discriminatory historical laws.[64]

In October 2014, the British Columbia government exonerated First Nations leaders who had been sentenced to be hanged in the Chilcotin War by Judge Begbie in 1864. Clark stated, "We confirm without reservation that these six Tsilhqot'in chiefs are fully exonerated for any crime or wrongdoing."[65]

On September 14, 2016, the BC Liberal Party named executive director Laura Miller to be the party's campaign director for the May 9, 2017, provincial election. At the time, Miller was facing charges in Ontario for allegedly deleting emails while in service with the Dalton McGuinty provincial Liberal government,[66] though she was later found not guilty.

The BC Liberals planned a bridge to replace the Massey Tunnel. The Liberal government instituted taxes for Metro Vancouver property purchases by foreign buyers ("Foreign Buyers Tax"), and implemented a program of no-interest loans from the government to first-time home buyers.

Clark campaigned on her government's economic track record, however the opposition NDP and Greens criticized her inaction on "lax political fundraising laws" and portrayed her as "beholden to big money interests", attacking the BC Liberals on "housing, transit and other affordability issues". While BC enjoyed strong economic growth and her government had five balanced budgets, BC was also "becoming behind the country’s most unequal province, socio-economically speaking, thanks to 37 per cent cuts to income tax levies, tightened rules for welfare eligibility, cuts to child-care subsidies, reductions in support for women’s centres and the doubling of post-secondary tuitions". Clark also faced "relentless criticism over bottomless corporate and foreign donations that gave her party a four-fold advantage over the NDP, such that even The New York Times labelled BC the "wild west" of political cash and the province's elections agency referred its investigation to the RCMP". During her leadership of the BC Liberals, she had shifted them "so far to the right [with regards to environmental and energy policies] to appease its ascendant federal Conservative flank it is now unrecognizable from the centrist party led by Gordon Campbell, her predecessor".[67] The combination of these controversies caused Liberal support in Metro Vancouver to collapse, as an estimated 100,000 voters switched from the Liberals to the Greens.[56][68]

Furthermore, a video of Clark having a run-in with a disgruntled voter inside a North Vancouver grocery store went viral with the hashtag #IamLinda.[56]

In the 2017 general election, the BC Liberals held the largest number of seats (43), ahead of the NDP (41) and Greens (3), but they were one seat short of forming a majority in the Legislative Assembly.

After the election, the Liberals entered negotiations with the Green Party of British Columbia, which held the balance of power in the legislative assembly; however, on May 29, 2017, the Greens instead reached a confidence and supply agreement with the official opposition NDP, which on paper allowed the NDP to form a minority government by one seat. Although NDP leader John Horgan and Green Party leader Andrew Weaver did not have a close personal relationship, Weaver picked the NDP over the Liberals, citing Clark's dismantling of the province's climate change plan (that Weaver worked with then-Premier Gordon Campbell to develop prior to entering politics) plus support for energy companies and pipelines. Furthermore, Horgan reached out to Weaver personally while Clark did not.[68]

Nonetheless, the Liberal government did not relinquish power yet, and Clark's new cabinet was sworn in on June 8.[69] Clark subsequently recalled the legislative assembly to test its confidence in her government, with a speech from the throne that included billions of dollars in new funding and key policies supported by the NDP and Greens.[56] Critics saw the throne speech as a cynical way for the Clark government to "desperately cling to power in selling out her party and its supporters in offering a de facto 'renewed' policy platform that stands in stark contrast to the last several years of the BC Liberal government and the still-warm corpse of the party’s election platform". One critic saw Clark's gambit as unprincipled "because it’s disrespectful to voters who rely on parties as aggregators of ideas that lead to policies they like", noted that the 30 pledges were absent from the Liberals' election platform, but also the "dramatic conversion to an NDP/Green-light version of her party appear like an over-correction, given the modest shift in support" as the Liberals lost 4 percentage points of popular vote in the general election.[70] However, both the NDP and Green Party leaders said they would not consider legislation by the Liberal minority government, and none of their MLAs broke ranks to support the throne speech.

On June 29, Clark's minority government was defeated 44–42 after Horgan introduced a no-confidence motion as an amendment to the throne speech. Clark then asked Lieutenant Governor Judith Guichon for a new election, contending that an NDP minority government would be unstable due to the need for one of the NDP's members to become speaker. Clark argued that an NDP speaker would frequently be forced to use their casting vote to break 43–43 ties. Guichon did not agree and refused to dissolve the legislature. Clark then resigned as premier, and Guichon invited Horgan to form a minority government,[71] which took office on July 18.

On July 28, Clark announced that she would resign as Liberal Party Leader and exit from politics, effective August 4, 2017.[72]