Phil Taylor, Toronto Mayoral Candidate, Says Politics Need Not be a Blood Sport

By Romy Marquez


TORONTO - With the way mainstream media is portraying the Oct. 25 election, voters don't seem to have much of a choice. As if there's a dearth of qualified people.

The truth is, out of the five candidates getting all the media attention, there are thirty-two others less conspicuous but probably more qualified to run Toronto as mayor.

For the most part they are faceless, no name recall like a Miller or Ford, or a Harper or Ignatief, but just as enthusiastic to change the culture of politics at City Hall.

Consider Phil Taylor, author, public speaker, motivational guru.

Soft-spoken with an immense capacity to bear no malice towards anyone, he refuses to engage in the current muck-racking among the mainstream media's five, namely, in alphabetical order, Rob Ford, Jose Pantalone, Rocco Rossi, George Smitherman and Sarah Thomson.

Every tired word, every irrelevant issue, every little gaffe are magnified a thousand times by these media and re-echoed a hundred times more in cyberspace so long as they are spewed from any of the five mouths of the talking heads.

It is in this context that Phil Taylor is a refreshing sight, perhaps a re-energizing change for all Toronto.

"I choose not to make this politics a blood sport," he declares in an interview with this reporter. It is his belief, he said, that running for a public office need not be that bloody and insulting.

Taylor preaches love, harmony and amity not for the sake of maintaining the status quo, as in the way public affairs are run and managed at City Hall, but as a means of evoking positives from everyone and preserving goodwill inherent in every man.

Asked why he stays quiet amidst the rancour among the candidates, he retorts: "That's not the path I want to go down".

Taylor premises his run for Toronto mayor on the glaring fact that only 35 percent of registered voters have gone to vote in the past elections.

"This means people are discouraged," he explains. "They're not showing up in polls".

He adds: "That also means that people in positions of power and the candidates themselves are not addressing the majority of Torontonians".

"The core is this: People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care," Taylor states, sounding philosophical.

"The real question is: Do they really care? I just want to know if you care about me," he says

Taylor does care enough for Toronto and its 2.48 million population (5.5 million in the Greater Toronto Area) that he wants to roll back taxes if he gets elected, and cut the mayor's salary. At least those two items are high in his agenda.

"Half of their (the population) life is being hijacked by the government through taxes," he explains. "We are not finding solutions by increasing taxes," he adds.
# # #