(Gabriel Yiu) I still remember prior to the voting of the 2001 provincial election, I interviewed Christy Clark on my television show. At that time Clark was the deputy leader of the BC Liberal Party. She’d left me quite an impression as a result of that encounter. It’s because I’d never seen a politician that would just blurt out her views in front of the camera with such glibness.
For example, she said BC would never have a deficit once the Liberals formed government. The development that followed was that the biggest government deficits seen in the province were recorded under the Liberal administration. The real issue is this: how can a politician say that his/her government will never have a deficit once they form government? There’re so many external factors that could impact the economy and finance beyond the control of the government. In the 90s, BC’s second largest trading partner, Japan, fell into a long deep recession. In 1997 there was the Asian Financial Crisis. These were external factors that had a huge impact on this province.
A decade later, Clark has not changed. On the morning she announced her bid for the BC Liberal leadership, she said on radio that resolving the HST issue was simple -- just call a vote in the legislature and the MLAs would vote according to the wish of their constituents and presto, problem resolved. I guess everyone knows that even as entrenched a figure as Gordon Campbell had to step down because of the HST, but Clark had the idea that the Liberal government’s huge problem could be resolved with a magic wand.
Once Clark became the premier, she spent over $5 million of taxpayers’ money and led her team of MLAs in a fight to save the HST. Even after the Liberal government lost the referendum, she is still delaying the annihilation of the HST.
During her leadership campaign, when Clark talked about her economic strategy, she declared that she would visit India and China in two months after she became the premier. That was a shallow promise aiming at the Chinese- and Indo-Canadian community because there’s no way she could get away from her new job in two months. At that time Clark did not even have a seat at the legislature.
Last fall, Premier Clark released her first Throne Speech and one of the key highlights was to put the Stanley Cup rioters to a public trial. The crown prosecution did not receive the extraordinary decision favorably, so the attorney general had to exercise her authority to make the prosecutors follow the wish of the premier and file the request for broadcasting the trials with the court. Although Clark’s decision was widely questioned and criticized, she stood by her decision.
On Feb 13, the morning before the legislature was recalled, in a morning radio show, Premier Clark was being pressed for her views on the issue again and she maintained that it’s the right decision. However, if you compare what Clark said on Monday to her demand last fall, you will see that Clark had stealthily shifted her position, from public broadcast of “the proceedings in every prosecution arising from the Vancouver riot… to trials and sentencing hearings” to only “the sentencing of those found guilty”. I guess Clark also came to realize that her great idea was not that great after all.
Several hours after Clark’s radio appearance, when the radio and web media were still reporting Clark’s position to seek the broadcasting of the riot trial sentencing, the court ruled against the government’s application for the public broadcast of the first rioter case. Shortly afterwards, British Columbians heard on the news that the premier and her attorney general were trying to explain why they’re now abandoning the pursuit of riot TV.
From HST, China-India trip to riot TV, such major policies of Clark’s were supposed to have gone through a vigorous examination before being announced to the public. These policies were shallow and unable to stand public scrutiny.
The veteran pundit Vaughn Palmer’s recent column has highlighted Clark’s shortcoming. When Clark was on the above-mentioned radio show, she was asked by a caller on the fairness of tolling the Port Mann bridge. Clark’s response was this: “The previous government’s policy was to only have tolls on new highway infrastructure.”
Her answer prompted the host to cut in and pointed out that the government Clark referred to was actually her government. Clark declared that she wasn’t part of the Liberal government in the past five years because she was hosting a show at the radio station.
Palmer rightfully pointed out in his newspaper article that the selective tolling policy set up by the “previous government” was in fact adopted at a cabinet meeting in April 2003 when Clark was the deputy premier of that government.
So would Premier Clark change the policy of the “previous government”? Clark said she won’t because “Fiddling with it at this stage would be very, very difficult. The government of the day came up with the fairest policy they could do.”
The exchanges truly reflect Clark’s craftiness and unwillingness to take responsibility. When the premier is confronted with one of her government’s unpopular policies, she would shift the responsibility to “the previous government.”
Even though Clark refuses to take responsibility for the “previous” Liberal government, she has been saying a lot and has even launched an ad campaign claiming that the Opposition Leader, Adrian Dix, is responsible for the NDP government in the 90s.
No wonder Clark’s public support is going downhill fast.
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