Christy Clark suggests Opposition’s dismissive tone is because she’s a woman
Christy Clark suggests Opposition’s dismissive tone is because she’s a woman
Premier says some members of the NDP ‘have a tendency to see women differently from men
Premier Christy Clark says her gender might have something to do with the dismissive tone she heard from Opposition leader John Horgan and other New Democrats in the fall session of the B.C. legislature.
Clark raised the issue in a year-end interview with The Vancouver Sun when asked if Horgan and the NDP underestimated her abilities as leader.
“I think that the NDP, some of the members of the NDP, do have a tendency to see women differently from men,” she said.
“It’s something women experience all over the place. Any woman watching this will be going, ‘Uh huh, I’ve felt that.’ So I think I experience a little bit of that from John Horgan, and Adrian Dix, as well.”
The premier did not cite any specific examples.
NDP leader Horgan declined to comment, though a spokeswoman pointed out 60 per cent of his senior staff is female.
Clark was present for only a few question periods of the session, but they included some of the most combative moments of the brief fall session. In several of those, she went head to head with the New Democrats.
There did not appear to be any overt sexist comments made by Horgan or NDP MLAs during the legislative session, which concluded Thursday.
The New Democrats — including female MLAs — frequently characterized Clark as more interested in photo ops than governing, of only acting when the television cameras were present, and of saying one thing publicly and then doing another.
Other NDP MLAs, including women, variously described the Clark government’s “cheerleading” of LNG, a throne speech that was “a bunch of fluff,” and LNG promises being similar to “unicorns and butterflies and flowers and fairies.”
Several observers remarked during the session that New Democrats seemed to underestimate Clark, including during question period last week when she openly mocked an NDP line of questioning into the ethnic outreach scandal, declared the NDP the “irrelevant party” and suggested Green MLA Andrew Weaver take over as the opposition.
But gender and dismissiveness is not the NDP’s real problem, said Clark.
“To me, the problem that the NDP have is not me. The problem that the NDP have is they do not have an identity any more. And you see them really struggling in question period, trying to find some relevance, and who is it that stands up with relevant, principled, thoughtful questions, most of which I disagree with? Andrew Weaver from the Green party.”