Christy Clark has said she’s leaving politics for good.

"I am done with public life,” the former B.C. premier told reporters today (July 31) in Vancouver.

"As leader, you know when it's time to leave, and this was my time to leave," she added.

Last Friday (July 28), Clark announced she intended to resign from both her positions as leader of the B.C. Liberal party and as an MLA for Kelowna West.

Clark was elected premier in 2011.

Her resignation follows a very close provincial election last May, when the Liberals won 43 seats to the NDP’s 41 and the Green’s three.

The NDP and Greens passed a vote of no confidence that forced Clark from power on July 18. Then they formed a minority government with the NDP’s John Horgan named premier.

Clark previously said that she intended to remain in the legislature as a member of the Opposition. “Looking back,” she said today in Vancouver, “I knew in my heart from election night that…it was time for me to leave, and that feeling grew.”

Clark leaves politics after failing to realize the number-one priority she set for her government during the 2011 provincial election: a liquefied-natural gas industry worth billions in tax revenue.

Six years later, the LNG projects that Clark promised her government would bring to B.C. still haven’t materialized. At the same time, the Liberals’ focus on LNG increasingly deterred younger voters who care more about the environment.

Clark’s departure from the legislature gives a bit of breathing room to the NDP. Until her seat is filled, Horgan can worry a little less about the slim majority that he and Green party leader Andrew Weaver must keep together to remain in power.

Before the NDP officially took power earlier this month, the Liberals had governed B.C. since 2001.