A big congratulation to Premier-designate Christy Clark who walked away from Saturday’s B.C. Liberal leadership vote and straight to the helm of B.C.It sure is an exciting time to be leader in the midst of questions of HST, tanker bans, and so much more.The next step now is living up to the promises she set out during her leadership campaign.I thought it was worth revisiting some of the things she said when she was in Smithers not too long ago as just a sort of reminder of what she said we should expect of her as leader.Streamlining the environmental review. In fact, streamlining the environmental review process — merging the provincial and federal streams — is what she said would be “job one.”The scuttlebutt I’ve heard is we’re heading towards a very good year in mineral exploration and mining. Now that the province has said ‘yes’ on issuing an environmental permit for the Northwest Transmission Line, making these processes more user friendly will help our economy. I look forward to seeing it become her number one priority.On another issue, she said she wants to redistribute government services. As in, not have everything centred in Victoria. It will be interesting to see how that happens, yet I hold particular optimism for that promise, only because it’s a similar line to what all the other candidates were saying. (Or variations of, including Kevin Falcon saying he would have established a Premier’s office in Prince George.)Until the time that she calls for a general election (that’s another thing, she said she would hold an election at some point following an HST referendum, two-and-a-half years is too long for a leader to hold office un-elected, she argued.) I think we will all look forward to see what gets done.
