VICTORIA – Less than 24 hours after winning a byelection in Vancouver-Point Grey, Premier Christy Clark raised the possibility Thursday that she might switch ridings ahead of the province’s next general election.
Clark said she is thinking seriously about moving her home within Vancouver, implying that could directly impact her decision on where to run in the next election.
“It’s something that I’m thinking about,” she said. “I’m not sure what the future is going to hold and again I don’t know when a general election might be.”
Clark now lives in Vancouver-Fairview, not in Vancouver-Point Grey, where she won a seat on Wednesday.
Asked if she will stay in Vancouver-Point Grey for the next election, Clark responded: “I don’t know.”
There has been speculation that former minister Colin Hansen might step down as MLA for Vancouver-Quilchena and make way for Clark in what is regarded as one of the safest B.C. Liberal seats in the province.
Hansen won in affluent Vancouver-Quilchena with 70 per cent of the vote in the 2009 election, with his NDP challenger finishing with 21 per cent.
Clark’s refusal to commit to running in Vancouver-Point Grey was attacked by NDP leader Adrian Dix and her byelection opponent David Eby.
“I don’t know what to say. I think it’s extraordinary,” Dix told reporters, when asked about Clark’s uncertainty over where she will run next.
Dix said that Clark’s ambivalent comment amounts to a “mountain of disrespect” toward the residents of Vancouver-Point Grey, whom she spent several weeks courting with assurances that she would become part of their community.
Dix said Clark’s remark is the “HST of candidacy decisions” – a reference to how former premier Gordon Campbell promised in the last election not to adopt the harmonized sales tax and then imposed the unpopular tax shortly after the vote.
Clark said she was pleased with Wednesday’s result, adding her campaign team predicted from the outset that if she won a byelection in Vancouver-Point Grey, it would be by a margin of about 500 votes. According to the preliminary tally, Clark won by 595 votes.
“I think this was a chance for voters in a swing riding, which has always been a swing riding, it’s been held by the NDP in the past for sure, to make a comment on the changes that I’ve been making since I became premier,” she said.
“Instead of rejecting those changes, instead of deciding they wanted to send the government a message – which is what British Columbians have done for three decades, for most of my life – they decided they wouldn’t do that,” she added, referring to the fact a sitting government hasn’t won a byelection in B.C. for 30 years.
Her NDP rival, Eby, dismissed Clark’s claim that her team always expected that the byelection would be close. He said jitters prompted the Clark campaign to become increasingly negative.
“When we started, Christy Clark said: “˜Oh, David Eby, he’s a good guy with lots of interesting policy ideas.’ And when she finished the campaign, I was a dangerous radical who wanted to turn Point Grey into a polygamous community.
“And I think that shift reflects the desperation of the Liberals towards the end. They expected a cakewalk.”
Eby added that he will consider over the weekend whether to seek office again for the NDP or return to his job as executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.
“I have to say that hearing about the lack of commitment from the premier to this riding motivates me even more. I think it’s absolutely outrageous.”
Clark will carry the byelection victory into a two-day B.C. Liberal party convention in Penticton starting today, a meeting she said will help further renew the party.
“We are reinvigorating the B.C. Liberal party. There are going to be real debates about real policies coming to the floor and it’s going to be really unstifled, open debate,” she said.
“You never know what’s going to happen. I think it’s going to be fun.”
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