Christy Clark said this week that she won’t be a leadership candidate for the Liberal Party of Canada.
Officially, one reason given was her limited French.
Unofficially, it was her extensive use of English that killed her chances.
A week ago she granted an interview to CBC Radio’s The House, for nearly a half-century a reverent but not obsequious platform for politicians. This ought to have been an easy-street showcase. Clark, after all, had been a radio talk show host herself and was presumably prepared on policy.
Meaning, she—or those advising her—ought to have expected host Catherine Cullen’s straightforward query on Clark’s 2022 detour to join the Conservatives to support Jean Charest in the leadership race.
Clark had taken out a Tory membership, touted her friend as a great prime minister (on the Conservative Journal of Canada podcast, no less), and made no particular secret of it. Why would she? People join parties, switch, then switch back. If asked, it can be explained.
But only if you’ve not taken leave of your senses.
It appears at that moment Clark neglected to remember the 19th-century invention of recording instruments, because she denied ever being a Conservative, ever taking out a membership, ever casting a ballot for Charest. How could she think no one could find out?
Now, at least for the time being, there are Tories still speaking to the CBC, and one of them confirmed Clark’s 2022-23 membership. Clark’s next said she wouldn’t “put it past them to manufacture one of them.” It appears at that moment Clark neglected to remember the 20th-century invention of the credit card, and how another 20th-century invention, the internet, can send its receipt to you. Like, that second.
And at that moment, you could almost hear the dream breaking. All the effort, all the preparation wasted and anticipation foregone, toutes ces leçons de langue, inutiles.
To quote a TV infomercial: but no, wait, there’s more.
Hours later she turned up on social media, saying “shit happens,” posting a turd emoji, with a measly “I misspoke” as an attempt to clarify the denial everyone was calling a lie.
She made a minor issue major, a textbook the-handling-is-worse-than-the-offence situation, the political equivalent of scoring on yourself in soccer—in this case with the player unable to own the own goal.
Clark is tough, but she had laid down untraversable tracks. In conversations this week with those who know her, almost everyone had a sentence that started, “All she had to do was say…” To a person, they would say something like: “I wanted to stop Pierre Poilievre, switched parties to help a friend do so, it didn’t work out, I came home, I can beat him, and I will.”
Seven-plus years hence, it is worth recalling Clark’s CV. Canada’s longest-serving female first minister oversaw the strongest performing provincial economy, balanced budgets, attracted investment, administered a revenue-neutral carbon tax without noticeable pushback, and united Liberals and Conservatives in the BC Liberals without noticeable fraying. It is a far cry from today.
Critics cite her unproductive battle with teachers, incessant coddling of business, tepid response to the housing crisis, wild-eyed belief in LNG as an economic saviour, indifference on Indigenous issues, and the episode of “triple-delete” erasure of government emails. Her candidacy could have folded, too, had the party balked at shedding the skin of the last decade’s incessant progressive agenda—had it thought Trudeau, and not what he was inculcating, was the problem.
Still, she inherited a tired government in 2011, so behind the BC NDP in the polls that the Province newspaper claimed on its front page before the 2013 vote that leader Adrian Dix “could kick a dog and still win.” She trounced him in a debate and at the polls. Even in 2017, BC Liberals won more seats and were within a few hundred votes in one riding to retain power, but the BC NDP’s John Horgan cut a deal, now lamented by then-leader Andrew Weaver of the Greens, to secure the premiership.
In the campaign to succeed Trudeau, she would have been an authentic Western voice (Mark Carney and Chrystia Freeland are long-transplanted Albertans) in a country gradually moving west. She would have been the best retail politician of the bunch, able to warm a room of millionaires or miners at will, and—had she defied the odds with such a short campaign runway and won the party—would have been in sheer visceral terms the only candidate who could parry with Poilievre in the Commons and connect with the voters he commandeered. Suddenly, CPAC would be must-watch TV.
Just as important, having once resuscitated a party, she would have stayed happy in winning the leadership battle, knowing there were long steps before ever winning the electoral war.