Christy Clark: Nothing Better Than Politics
Leaping back into politics from broadcasting, Christy Clark announced in December 2010 her intention to replace Gordon Campbell as leader of the BC Liberals. Now, having won, she's preparing to lead her party into an election battle with the NDP. Here she is in a 2005 profile, speaking on timing, ambition, and what she thinks her future holds.
The Clark family lives high enough on Port Moody’s Heritage Mountain that your ears pop repeatedly on the drive up. On these roads, curving around the remnants of recently cleared forest, Whistler-style homes tower over short, steep driveways. Fleets of Honda minivans and Suburu station wagons reflect the neighbourhood’s popularity with young families. Property values are in the half-million range and rising.
And so when ex-politician Christy Clark, 39, answers the door with her cell phone in hand, dressed in a black velour track suit, her auburn hair neatly styled and hazel eyes carefully outlined and shaded, she seems the belle of this casual and composed street. There is nothing to suggest that anything ulterior lies behind these polished rows of uniform houses.
After exchanging pleasantries, she quickly relieves me of any preconceptions a visitor may have about Heritage Mountain. Sure, it’s upscale. But this very street, she says conspiratorially, has been the scene of some of the biggest marjiuana grow-op busts in the suburb.
Clark gets a kick out of revealing that her neighbourhood is a known marijuana hotbed. She likes an audience, and in the estimation of provincial Liberal party insiders, she was the most articulate and media-savvy minister in Premier Gordon Campbell’s previous government. Her star rose quickly and she was compared to Carole Taylor: smart, well-connected, photogenic and amiable.
As an MLA from 1996 – when she won her seat in Port Moody-Burnaby Mountain – until this past spring when she chose not to run for re-election, she was also brash, even occasionally off-colour. She exhibited a candour that is refreshing in the political realm where most people are programmed to carefully self-censor. Christy Clark was a B.C. politician worth keeping an eye on.
But she’s been out of office for three months already and has yet to aim any of her well-honed barbs in Gordon Campbell’s direction. Even now, while she has no qualms discussing her street’s unsavory past, she remains remarkably on-message regarding the issue of grow-ops in general. She easily works her government’s record into the conversation by mentioning a bill the Liberals introduced to permit seizure of property used for grow-ops.
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