Premier Christy Clark will let her job creation performance speak for her on Election Day, a record she heralded at a Kamloops business Thursday.
Even though a recent poll showed the B.C. Liberals falling below the 30 per cent mark in the polls for the first time this year, Clark said she is confident B.C. residents will support her party on May 14.
"I don't want to sugar coat it, I know I'm the underdog," Clark told a press conference. "But I'm OK with that, because I know I'm a fighter and I really believe in what we're doing here in British Columbia."
Clark addressed her party's showing in the latest Angus Reid poll after providing an 18-month update on her B.C. Jobs Plan.
She held the press conference at NRI Distribution in Dallas, a company whose growth and success is what the jobs plan will continue to duplicate, she said.
The Liberals' retention rate fell by 10 points in four week, the poll stated. There's no major area of the province where the incumbent party has the support of even a third of decided voters.
The NDP have 48 per cent support while the B.C. Green Party and B.C. Conservatives sit at 11 per cent each, according to the poll.
NDP leader Adrian Dix maintains a higher approval rating than Clark, and is also seen as the preferred person for the province's top political job.
Clark took the results in stride, saying the media always likes to paint elections as horse races.
"This is not a horse race. This is not about who's up or who's down. This is a choice about who is going to secure our economy," she said. "Who is going to make sure that folks here at NRI still have jobs to go to in a few years?"
Clark said the jobs plan, which she implemented soon after taking office, has a proven track record her party can stand on.
According to Clark, the province has seen 47,100 new jobs since August 2011 and a decline in the unemployment rate to 6.3 per cent. B.C. has also seen $80 billion invested in major projects with an estimated value of proposed projects at $156.3 billion, she said. The province has a triple-A credit rating and record exports.
The province has 10 new non-treaty agreements with First Nations and reduced the Water and Land Act permit backlog by 50 per cent.
"I am confident, with the record we've got and you can see the results that we've got in the jobs plan, that people will look at it and say the people who will protect or economy in the long term are the B.C. Liberals," said Clark.
Kamloops-South Thompson NDP candidate Tom Friedman doesn't believe the plan is enough to save Clark and her Liberals.
That's what people tell him while he's campaigning, he added.
He said people are sceptical about the B.C. Jobs Plan.
"They don't see any leadership coming out of Victoria, no vision for the province," said Friedman.
Clark held a roundtable with media at Kamloops-South Thompson Liberal candidate Todd Stone's office after the NRI event.
The Angus Reid survey was conducted online among 809 randomly selected panellists on March 18 and 19.







