Sometimes it feels like British Columbia doesn’t really have a premier.

Whenever there’s big news in this province, Christy Clark can’t seem to be found. Think back to the Mount Polley mining disaster last summer, or to the Vancouver oil spill this spring. On both occasions Premier Clark was AWOL, nowhere to be seen or heard at these moments of urgency and concern for the citizens she is supposed to serve.

This glaring absence of leadership in B.C. was again evident last week when it was announced that the ‘No’ side had won the Lower Mainland transit referendum – a drawn-out, ill-conceived and doomed plebiscite that was the premier’s idea.

On the day that news broke voters had rejected a hike in the PST to pay for necessary transit services and infrastructure, it was left to Vancouver’s Mayor Gregor Robertson to address the media. It was a listless performance by Robertson, forced to admit there was no “Plan B” for transit funding. He gently noted that the ball was back in the provincial government’s hands.

Robertson and his fellow mayors should have been more strident: the referendum was a fiasco from the beginning, the wrong issue to put to voters and the wrong proposed funding mechanism. No other big infrastructure projects have been put to plebiscite in B.C. and – whether it’s new bridges, highway expansion or hospital renovations – they are funded out of general government revenues. The bureaucratic mess that is Translink was foisted on the mayors by the B.C. government; local governments should demand a return to local control over transit and a serious commitment of provincial funding. All of this to say the next time you’re stuck in traffic think of Premier Clark, who gave us this referendum and then bailed out, while others invested months of campaigning and political capital.

Premier Christy Clark at a press conference announcing another LNG agreement. | Photo courtesy of Jamie Russell

Clark’s latest absence has been noticed. Stephen Quinn wrote in The Globe and Mail on Friday, “Where is the Premier? This was, after all, her baby. But 28 hours after the result of the vote was announced she remains MIA.” As of July 5, B.C. had still heard nothing from their premier. Her Twitter account had been dormant since July 1 (not even an emergency evacuation of Port Hardy due to a forest fire could rouse her to communicate via social media with British Columbians.)

Although this pattern of disappearing at key moments is longstanding, it’s worth pointing out that Clark has more reason to hide from the media and public than ever. Calls for an inquiry into the 2012 firings by her government’s Health Ministry have been growing for the past month. Finally, last week, the B.C. Liberals conceded that there needed to be more scrutiny on these firings and their tragic aftermath. Health Minister Terry Lake announced that the provincial Ombudsperson will be looking into the matter, still well short of the public inquiry that’s needed.

We don’t know when Christy Clark will finally reappear, but we can be sure she’ll show up on July 13, when the B.C. Legislature opens for a rare summer session. The agenda is limited to LNG, the premier’s favourite topic, with the government pushing through their latest sweetheart royalty agreement with Malaysia’s Petronas. The deal was announced despite a resounding rejection of the project by the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation.

In past legislative sessions, only Green MLA Andrew Weaver has voted against the government’s LNG plans. But now the deal is worse than ever for B.C., effectively letting a foreign company take the resource for next to nothing because global gas prices are down and supply is way up. Numerous reports suggest the B.C. Liberals’ much hyped “trillion dollar” LNG boom will never come close to happening.

Christy Clark often seems more like B.C.’s LNG-booster-chief than the premier. John Horgan and the NDP should stand up to her on this file too, and rethink and reverse their past practice of going along with Clark’s LNG pipedreams. The expansion of fracking is unacceptable environmentally and the whole industry is disastrous for the climate. Besides, why help her give away the store when there’s so little in it for B.C.?

There are signs the NDP might be ready to take a tougher stand on Clark’s LNG folly. Horgan has become fond of telling the story of legendary Saskatchewan NDP Premier Tommy Douglas emerging from a meeting with foreign oil executives and telling the press there was good news and bad news. The bad news was that the oil companies were leaving Saskatchewan. The good news? “They’re leaving the oil behind.”