“If I told you I was running for the BC Liberal leadership and you didn’t smack me across the head, I would be very disappointed. No, absolutely not. Are you kidding me?” says Tamara Taggart in a no-holds barred Episode #106 of This is VANCOLOUR podcast
A veteran broadcaster in Vancouver, Taggart is most known for her tenure as CTV News at Six’s co-anchor, alongside Mike Killeen, from 2011 to 2018. She has also volunteered thousands of hours and helped raise millions of dollars for charities focused on health care, the well-being of children, and people with disabilities — public service which earned Taggart the Order of British Columbia in 2015.
Within days after the 2020 B.C. provincial election, her name was being floated in the media as an outsider candidate to replace former BC Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson.
Taggart denies that the party ever approached her with the idea, finding her inclusion in the speculation bewildering. “I don’t even know where it came from.”
(Global BC’s Richard Zussman says he was told by some BC Liberals that she was interested.)
Regardless, Taggart, who now hosts the TELUS Talks podcast, has little interest in this job opening.
“Any party that has two MLAs who show up on the steps [of the B.C. Legislature] to speak out against a woman’s right to choose is not a party for me,” says Taggart, invoking the 2019 March for Life rally in Victoria which former BC Liberal MLAs Rich Coleman (Langley East) and Laurie Throness (Chilliwack-Kent) attended.
“I am very firm in my beliefs, in what I think are human rights, and if there is a party that doesn’t support that, then I have no time [for them],” says Taggart. “The BC Liberals are conservatives, as far as I can tell.”
However, Taggart revealed that she was briefly courted by the BC Liberals in 2018, quite literally the day after she had been let go by CTV.
“I’m waiting in the doctor’s office. I’m just destroyed, right? I’m shocked, I’m destroyed, I’m so sad, and my phone rings… and it was Andrew Wilkinson,” Taggart recalls. “He said, ‘It might be too soon but I was hoping that we could meet and talk.’”
She admits to not being in a “good space” to chat with Wilkinson at the time, but that ultimately, she never met with him anyway.
“Once I had some space to deal with the shock, and when it came up again, I was just like, I can’t meet… I didn’t take the meeting.”
Later that year, however, Taggart announced that she would run for the Liberal Party Of Canada in the riding of Vancouver-Kingsway against the incumbent NDP Member of Parliament, Don Davies, in the 2019 federal election.
“That’s why it’s so funny that then, a year later, I did say yes to the federal Liberals — not the same party at all.”
Her first foray into politics was unsuccessful.
It was a loss that Taggart does not seem to mourn in perspective, citing her differences with the Trudeau government on both Bill C-7 and the limited scope of federal disability support during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Obviously, when I look at this year, I’m like, ‘Well, boy, I dodged a bullet.’”
Although she has not entirely closed the door on running for public office again, Tamara Taggart has clearly rejected any rumours that she will vy for the BC Liberals’ top job next year.
Mo Amir is the host of This is VANCOLOUR, a politics and culture podcast available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and www.thisisvancolour.com
