Carole Taylor a political tour de force
To mark Canada’s 150th birthday, we are counting down to Canada Day with profiles of 150 noteworthy British Columbians:
She covered wars, natural disasters and military coups, but one of the nastier conflicts was the reaction when, as finance minister, she tabled a game-changing Liberal provincial budget — not to her numbers but to her shoes.
New Democratic Party critics, one wearing fancy black stilettos herself, haughtily denounced Carole Taylor’s designer footwear as evidence she was out of touch with British Columbians.
Instead, that budget helped detoxify a poisonous relationship between public sector unions and government, bought labour peace for the 2010 Winter Olympics and averted a nightmare for a government that faced 90 per cent of the public-sector contracts expiring simultaneously.
Taylor offered individual workers $4,000 signing incentives if new contracts were inked quickly and cash incentives to unions signing four-year contracts that would shelter time-critical Olympic construction from job actions. Ideology aside, it was a tactical tour de force in a political arena ripe with confrontation.
Born Carole Goss in Toronto in 1945, she attended Weston Collegiate, won the Miss Toronto beauty pageant in high school, aged 17, and when offered the prize as cash or tuition, chose tuition — the only winner ever to make that choice, reported Gary Mason in 2005.
She completed her degree in English at the University of Toronto. While a student she was invited to co-host a popular CTV show for teenagers. That led to jobs with CTV’s national morning show, then its prize-winning investigative news magazine, W5.
In 1976 she joined the CBC, moved to Vancouver, married Art Phillips, the late, great, visionary Vancouver mayor, and in 1986 won a seat on Vancouver city council, becoming its most popular member with voters.
She chaired Port Vancouver, the Greater Vancouver Hospital District, the Vancouver Board of Trade and the board of CBC/Radio Canada. In 2005 she was elected as MLA, took on the difficult finance portfolio, finessed that tense labour file and brought in the carbon tax, lauded by economists as one of the most effective climate-management tools yet implemented.
Taylor has been a university chancellor, adviser to premiers, bankers and business leaders. She has four honorary degrees. Perhaps most important, she’s been an admirable, steady, fundamentally decent role model for young women — for whom she has advice:
“Yes, you can have everything, but not all at once. Take your time, and in doing so, make sure you make mistakes, because if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying.”