Source : Globe & Mail

VICTORIA -- Carole Taylor, B.C.'s Finance Minister, said yesterday she won't attempt to be Vancouver's next mayor.

Ms. Taylor, 62, touched off fierce speculation about the job last November when she announced after less than a single term in office that she intends to bow out of provincial politics.

She never hid her interest in the mayor's job. However, she said in an interview yesterday that the timing just didn't work. The next civic election is in November, and she has committed to bringing in the next B.C. budget, a task she says will carry her through until the summer.

"I did the traditional Canadian thing of taking a walk in the snow," she said. "I realized the timing of this was problematic for me and not in my hands."

Mayor Sam Sullivan hasn't announced plans to vacate the job, but Ms. Taylor said she was being aggressively courted to run.

"Ideally I would have said, 'Talk to me in the summer, once the budget is done,' " she said. "But there were too many people getting involved, people who wanted to run with me, other people who were putting off their decision on whether to run until I decided what I was doing, so I decided it was better to clarify it now."

She added: "The answer was probably going to be no anyway."

Ms. Taylor's decision to leave B.C. politics came abruptly, after Premier Gordon Campbell asked his caucus to tell him before the end of 2007 if they were running again.

She took the time to think about her next step over Christmas, spent in Whistler with her family.

As a rookie MLA, she surprised many with her immediate appointment to the powerful finance portfolio, but made history when she managed to settle every single public-sector labour contract without a strike.

Her next budget is expected to flesh out the B.C. government's commitments to combat climate change. Her part will be to usher in revenue measures that will ensure all British Columbians, not just businesses, bear some of the burden.

Ms. Taylor has already floated the idea of a carbon tax, and she confirmed yesterday that any such measure would be revenue-neutral. However, it could take many forms. Whether the tax would be at the source or at the pump, and how that income would be balanced out, will be decided in the next few weeks, she said.

"But anything we might do will have to be transitional," she said.

© Globe and Mail