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Granville Island 52 BCBUSINESS MARCH 2016 JESSICA DEEKS (JODY WILSON-RAYBOULD); ADAM BLASBERG (IRENE LANZINGER) evaluated in those terms. She points to the settlement with the teachers' union as an example of a positive disruption. Most parents of school-aged children, having scrambled for childcare during the months-long strike, wouldn't see it that way. But Clark's point is this: the antagonistic pattern of teachers' strikes and government's back-to-work legislation had gone on for 25 years and needed to be broken. "I insisted that we figure out how we were going to negoti- ate a settlement, and it was really hard to get there. But the reason I wanted to was that we had to force peace between both parties, and the result was what I hope is going to be a very long-term change in the system: at least five years of labour peace." Another rancorous issue—with no resolution in sight—is transit in the Lower Mainland and how it's funded. Clark insisted on a referendum for a new sales tax to cover more buses and trains; when it failed, many blamed the premier for gridlocking the pro- cess. "It's going to take a longer time to change the landscape around TransLink and the way that municipal governments inter- act with senior levels of govern- ment," she says. "We haven't been successful yet on changing the culture around how we make decisions on transit. We will, but it's going to be slow." Clark built much of her 2013 election campaign on one word, "jobs," which she continues to use with great frequency. It usually comes up around big energy and infrastructure projects, especially LNG, on which promise she hasn't given up. The billions in wealth Clark expected would flow from LNG is still far from her grasp, due largely to low global oil prices and foreign competition, and she acknowledges it's been harder than she expected to get the indus- try in motion. But a smaller initia- tive also aimed at giving people jobs is already creating meaning- ful change. It started when Clark looked at some particularly stub- born statistics: single parents (mostly moms) don't get off social assistance. "So I asked all our ministers to find out why," says the premier. "And guess what? All the various ministries are working at cross- purposes. We say to a single par- ent, 'We want you to get in the workforce, but here's the thing. You're going to have to find and pay for child care, you're going to have to find and pay for the edu- cation, you're going to have to fig- ure out how to get back and forth to your school—and by the way, we're going to cut off your welfare cheque the minute you register for school.' So of course nobody gets a job!" The answer, realized in the Single Parent Employment Ini- tiative, required various minis- tries to work together and offer tuition, transportation, child care and ongoing income sup- port to single parents who pur- sue training for an in-demand occupation. Fifty people from the program are already working, with hundreds more enrolled. "We are starting to change those statistics," says Clark, "but what it took was break- ing down those silos between min- istries and getting everybody to pony up a little money from their budget and say, 'We are going to do this part of the process com- pletely differently.'" ent ra l to Christ y Clark's success is her dynamo deputy chief of staff, Michele Cadario, who assists the premier in every aspect of her agenda. On the federal level, rookie Liberal MP Jody Wilson- Raybould holds huge promise to disrupt as Canada's first aboriginal justice minister. Among the for- mer Crown prosecutor's assign- ments: legalizing marijuana, engaging First Nations in decisions about resource development, and addressing issues of marginaliza- tion, poverty and inequality for aboriginal people. Meanwhile, holding B.C. politicians to account is Irene Lanzinger, president of the BC Federation of Labour, who champions equality through various efforts to support work- ers and ensure workplace safety, including her fight for a $15 mini- mum wage. n CHANGE AGENTS (Above) Jody Wilson- Raybould will direct marijuana legalization and First Nations issues as Canada's justice minister; (below) Irene Lanzinger will push for a $15 minimum wage as presi- dent of the BC Federation of Labour

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