Dix, Clark get most face-time in BC leaders debate
Posted April 30, 2013 6:11 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – There was no clear-cut winner in last night’s BC leaders debate, at least not as far as most political pundits were concerned. But that doesn’t mean only softball questions were asked.
Less than 10 minutes into the debate, BC Liberal leader Christy Clark was asked about her much-publicized running of a red traffic light at the suggestion of her 11-year-old son. Clark apologized, calling it a parenting mistake.
Clark was grilled on her budgeting ability; she was asked by moderator Jennifer Burke about her claims that Moody’s Investor Services has said her budget was balanced when Moody’s has made no such claims.
“When I was became premier, I started on working on getting government spending under control. Then we worked on balancing the budget, which we’ve done. Now that we are balanced, we are in a position to start eliminating the debt for our kids,” said Clark.
NDP leader Adrian Dix skirted around specifics on how he plans to pay for what would be a deficit budget over three years.
OMNI TV political analyst Kim Emerson thinks Dix did a decent job explaining his flip flop on oil pipelines. “He had one position going into the election, and he changed that position as the election started to get underway; that’s a really tough one to get out from underneath. He explained it pretty well, but it’s still a flip-flop.”
When asked about the infamous memo-to-file incident where he admitted back-dating a memo for former premier Glen Clark, Dix said, “I was responsible for my mistakes. I have not run one negative ad.”
“I felt great; I think it was a lot of fun,” said Dix after the debate. “I talked about a more prosperous society, about a more generous society.”
After the debate, reporters asked Clark how she thought Dix did in the debate, but she wouldn’t answer. “It was about each of us getting a chance to get our message out. I was really thinking about what I was doing.”
BC Conservative leader John Cummins didn’t hold back during his opening remarks.
“Everyone knows that the Liberals can’t win this election,” said Cummins. “So you’ve probably tuned in to see what Adrian Dix will look like as a premier.”
Cummins later had to defend his party’s background checks for candidates after four were fired during the campaign. Emerson says the leaders appeared to gang up on the Conservative leader about this issue.
“In some ways, it’d be hard not to, given the vetting process he’s gone through with his four candidates that he had selected to run in the election and now they’re gone. So, that was one thing that they wanted to get clear and have at him,” says Emerson.
While Green Party leader Jane Sterk repeatedly took Dix to task over his environmental record, though she did not deliver any political haymakers.
Emerson thinks Sterk did quite well in the debate. “I thought that perhaps [she] had a couple of the best lines of the night when she said that Christy Clark’s debt-reduction strategy was a fantasy.”
By the end of the debate, Sterk felt a little left out. “I thought there was a deliberate strategy to keep the focus on Adrian and Christy, and I predicted… my team thought that they might include me more.”
Emerson was looking for Clark or Dix to hit a home run at the cost of another leader but says that didn’t happen. “Everybody went back and forth… Will that sway anybody in any particular direction? I don’t think it’s going to bring people out in droves at all.”
