© Features

the other press

Barbara K. Adamski

e opfeatures@telus.net

fipril 7, 2004

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

J.J. McCullough
OP Contributor

 

The Honorable Christy Clark is
Deputy Prime Minister of the
Province of British Columbia and
Minister of Children and Family
Development. She is also a
Member of the Legislative
Assembly representing the City of
Port Moody, and a leading figure
within the BC Liberal Party.
Minister Clark agreed to sit down
to an interview with the Other
Press.

Good morning, Madame Minister,
and thank you for agreeing to this
interview. Youve recently switched from
the Ministry of Education to the
Ministry of Children and Families.

I assume that was quite a
bureaucratic hassle. Based on your
own experiences, is this province mak-
ing any headway in cutting back gov-
ernment excess?

Yes. Yes with an exclamation mark.
In this ministry, Children and
Families, we have cut the headquar-
ters staff by 50 percent. We've gone
from 800 people down to 400 peo-
ple, so there are a lot fewer bureau-
crats working in Victoria. Now, we
try not to just fire people. We try to
pursue other means, like getting
people to retire voluntarily and then
get rid of their positions afterwards,
and that kind of thing. But no sin-
gle, great, mass firing. So in essence,
yeah, we've really slimmed down the
bureaucracy in Victoria.

That’ a good thing?

Yeah. I don’t think anyone wants to

ae Page 18

‘Interview with
Christy Clark

know that youre spending their
money on bureaucrats. People want
to know that if a government is pay-
ing people, it’s nurses and doctors
and social workers and people on
the front lines. In this ministry,
we've cut a few social workers. But
as a percentage, it’s a much smaller
percentage of front line workers
than it was of headquarters staff.

Ideologically, how do you define your-
self? What views are the foundation for
your political beliefs?

I have always defined myself as a
middle-of-the-road liberal. I was a
member of the BC Liberal Party
when we used to get 5 percent of the
vote. I was never Socred, I was never
New Democrat, so I’ve always
believed in very middle-of-the-road
politics. I think we've had a chal-
lenge in this last couple of years,
because BC swung so far to the left
under the NDP, anything that’s kind
of “back to normal” has required
taking some really tough meas-
ures—probably tougher than any-
body would have liked to have
taken—and we had to do it quicker
than anyone probably wanted to do.
But I think overall, when people
look back on our government they
will look at what we achieved, and
how we left British Columbia.
They'll say that this was a pretty
middle-of-the-road government.
BC Ferries, for example. We
didn’ sell it to the private sector. We
wanted it to operate better, get it
operating more like an independent
entity, so we spun it off from gov-
ernment, making it an independent
Crown corporation. That's a mid-
dle-of-the-road sort of solution. Lots

http://www.otherpress.ca

of things that we haven't done, peo-
ple think we should have. Liquor
store privatization, for example, and
privatizing ICBC. There are lots of
examples of things we didn’t do that
our supporters really wanted us to
do. But there are also lots of things
that we did do that people will look
at and go “Boy, that’s not centre of
the road. That's right-wing.” But
that’s the mix.

 

    

Photo by J.J. McCullough

 

I think the NDP had a basic philos-
ophy of entitlement. That’s part of
their theological view. It’s not ours.
We disagree about that and I think
to some extent they did help encour-
age a culture of entitlement. But I
do think that the results of the last
election showed a complete and
utter rejection of the NDP
approach. So, yes, I think they did
have an ideological bias that they

 

‘I was the third-highest vote-getter in BC
in the last election. But that doesn’t mean
I don’t have to work for the next one.”

So you wouldn't agree with the charac-
terization that the Liberal Party is
right-wing?

No, I don't think so. The period
we're in in British Columbia right
now is a period that every province
has gone through in the past: a
process of trying to get our expendi-
tures under control. The sad thing
is, in British Columbia we're just the
last in the country to do it.
Manitoba did it. Saskatchewan did
it—under NDP government. In
fact, Quebec did it. And we're just
kind of the last to come to the party.
But the process of trying to get your
finances under control and cutting
spending is painful. So no, we're not
unusual from the rest of the country
in that. It’s just we're so far behind
the curve it’s really noticeable.

Do you think the ten years of NDP
rule has negatively affected the way
British Columbians view the role of
government in their lives?

Deputy Minister Christy Clark

pushed, but no, I don’t think that

they were very successful.

A common complaint in this, and
other provinces, is that our system of
government forces us to give important
cabinet positions to men and women
who often do not have any experience
or education in dealing with their
portfolio topics. Wouldn't this govern-
ment be better served if we appointed
people from outside of the legislature to

cabinet, as they do in American states?

Well, it’s not part of the Canadian
tradition, the British parliamentary
tradition, to do that. The NDP. tried
that, actually, with Ed John. Ed
John was the chairman of the First
Nations summit, and they appoint-
ed him to cabinet. But they did it
with the understanding that he
would win a seat in the next elec-
tion.

Choosing people from outside
government has its advantages in
that you have a much bigger pool to

choose from. A premier has a very
limited pool of 79 people, or 50
people, or 35 people, depending on
how many seats his or her party has.
So you've got a really narrow group
of people to choose from. But the
downside of getting people from
outside of parliament is that they are
way less accountable. In that case, in
the United States, only the president
is accountable for what the secretary
of defense does, or what the secre-
tary of education does, or what the
secretary of housing does. He's
accountable for all that stuff. In our
system, I’m accountable for what we
do in the Ministry of Children and
Families. Rick Thorpe is account-
able for what we do in Revenue.
We're accountable to the parliament.
We're there every day to answer
questions from the opposition and
the public. That doesn’t happen in
the United States, so that results in a
lower level of accountability.

But they have congressional hearings
and that sort of thing, too. Personally,
though, you must see your duties as
minister taking precedence over your
duties as legislator. Doesn't this make
the legislature largely irrelevant, with
the executive and legislature being
merged like this?

It can if the private members don’t
have any say in the goings-on of the
House. The more limited their
power, the more whipped they get
by the party whip, the less say they
have. But you know, in Britain,
where our system comes from, they
have a really loose system where the
people are allowed to vote their con-
science, where the leader is elected
from the caucus all the time—that’s