Premier Christy Clark sat down in the cabinet chamber Monday as the real deal. After two years of executing an inherited mandate, she kicked off the first meeting of a government that is indisputably her own.
The cabinet is entirely her own creation. It鈥檚 split almost evenly. Half are veteran ministers who handled the two difficult previous years, apparently to Clark鈥檚 satisfaction. Half are newcomers to cabinet 鈥� seven of them brand-new MLAs 鈥� picked on their merits.
Their marching orders are also entirely hers. They each got a mandate letter after the swearing-in that outlines her expectations of them. To summarize: Grow the economy, but not the government.
Asked about the difference now that she鈥檚 won an election, Clark said 鈥減eople are more excited about the possibilities.鈥�
鈥淭o have a mandate from the public that we clearly articulated and people clearly accepted is something none of us had for the last two years.
鈥淧articularly with all the new people, there鈥檚 a real sense that this is a chance for big ideas to come forward and for us to act on them.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 pretty exciting. It鈥檚 a chance to be bold.鈥�
Also unveiled Monday was a revamped deputy-minister lineup that is the creation of Clark and her deputy minister, John Dyble.
The big internal news out of Monday鈥檚 relaunch is the absence of Graham Whitmarsh鈥檚 name anywhere in the lineup.
He was dismissed as deputy health minister, replaced by Stephen Brown, who moved over from the Children and Family Development Ministry.
It was a quiet end to a five-year stint with the government of B.C. in which he handled a number of crises.
Whitmarsh was recruited in 2007 to prosecute the B.C. Liberals鈥� 鈥渨ar鈥� on climate change. He was installed as head of the climate-action secretariat, which became a strike force involved in the carbon tax, the carbon-neutral government goal, the setting of greenhouse-gas reduction targets and all manner of other green initiatives.
They got a lot done, but the push was relatively short-lived. The secretariat got downgraded in the flow chart two years later and Whitmarsh was shuffled out to the finance ministry and promoted a few months later to deputy finance minister in the spring of 2009.
It was Whitmarsh who had the job of telling the Liberals that their pre-election budget had turned into a farce. He advised that revenues were hundreds of millions of dollars short of what was anticipated, as the economic meltdown took hold in the middle of the campaign.
That eventually led to a budget that was five times deeper into the red than was first promised.
But the hallmark of his career in finance was his decision to pay off the $6-million legal bill incurred by the B.C. Rail duo, Dave Basi and Bobby Virk.
He and ex-deputy attorney general David Loukidelis (since gone) signed off on the deal, which involved both Basi and Virk switching their corruption pleas to guilty.
The writeoff 鈥� which reversed the concept that indemnities are repayable if guilt is determined 鈥� was approved on the assumption that the aides didn鈥檛 have enough assets to bother seizing. But it reactivated all the suspicions about the B.C. Rail scandal and became an entirely new chapter in that story. It was one with a lot more focus on the deputies than they normally like.
When Clark took over the premiership in 2011, Whitmarsh was moved to the Health Ministry as deputy. He attracted persistent questioning there as well, as the person who signed the dismissal letters for the hired health researchers, an issue that former health minister Margaret MacDiarmid (since defeated) never satisfactorily explained.
The exact reason for his dismissal is considered a private personnel matter. But it鈥檚 likely related to the fact he was one of the higher-profile Gordon Campbell appointees.
Just So You Know: Clark plans to erase the last asterisk beside her name 鈥� her lack of a seat 鈥� by running in a Westside-Kelowna byelection, likely in mid-July. Even before then, the legislature will begin sitting later this month to pass the budget that was introduced in February, but wasn鈥檛 approved before the house dissolved for the election. It will be updated by one quarter to reflect the passage of time, but otherwise be the same.
