Monique Taylor went from political apathy to Queen’s Park in five years

By Gord Bowes, News staff

Three months after her election, the new Hamilton Mountain MPP is still on the front lines.
With staff away for the week for training, Monique Taylor was helping answer phones in her constituency office between appointments.
It’s what she loves, she tells the Mountain News, and while her schedule is much busier these days she doesn’t want to get too far removed from the people she serves.
“I have a lot of community roots,” says Taylor. “I love the community. For me, it’s not about politics. It’s not about how much history do I know, it’s about the future — how are we going to make people’s lives better.
“If I can help one person in a day, it makes me feel better. I like to be able to advocate on behalf of people.”
Five years ago, Taylor was barely interested in politics. She had voted NDP all of her life — her parents worked in unionized environments — but was never politically active. She was in the service industry — waitressing, mostly — for much of her adult life.
As she approached her mid-30s she realized through her friends and family that she was truly NDP from head to toe. Off work due to an injury and surrounded by like-minded people, she was encouraged to volunteer on Chris Charlton’s 2006 federal campaign.
“I was in the same mind frame,” said Taylor. “It just made the NDP stronger in me, but I was by no means active before that.”
On her second or third day, the office manager had to return to her regular job. Taylor was asked to man the office phones. Organizers were pleased with the work she did and asked her to stay on.
“It goes back to customer service,” said Taylor.
She said she learned other positions during the course of the campaign, became adept at them and also became addicted to the process.
Not long after Charlton won the Hamilton Mountain MP seat in 2006, Taylor went to volunteer for Peter Tabuns’ campaign during his byelection win.
After that, she was offered a spot at an NDP training session in Saskatchewan.
“I guess the provincial office liked that I was enthusiastic,” Taylor recalled recently.
When she returned she went to work on Cheri DiNovo’s byelection campaign. She then helped Scott Duvall win his Ward 7 council seat that fall.
A few months later, she worked on Andrea Horwath’s Ontario NDP leadership campaign in early 2009 and was elected as a member at large for the provincial NDP association during the same convention in Hamilton.
Within about 12 months, Taylor went from relative apathy to fully engaged.
“It was just the right people always encouraging me to take on a new position,” she said.
Late in 2010, Taylor decided to run for the Hamilton Mountain NDP nomination. Supporters would never admit they expected anything but a win last October, but knocking off Liberal cabinet minister Sophia Aggelonitis for the Hamilton Mountain seat was a pretty big accomplishment in her first campaign.
Her new job is similar, yet vastly different to her previous one, as assistant to Duvall at Hamilton city hall.
“We get a lot of concerns here that we can’t fix as quickly as you can with municipal (issues),” says Taylor, now 39.
With systemic issues involving long-term care facilities, for example, she would contact the appropriate ministry, “But until we sit again we can’t fight that legislation.”
“So it’s a little more frustrating in that way because there isn’t always a quick fix,” she said. “It’s a bigger process. It’s a bigger picture.”
The Ontario legislature returns Feb. 21. The rookie MPP, who is her party’s critic for children and youth services, says she is working on her first piece of legislation, involving Ontario Ombudsman office oversight of Children’s Aid Societies.
An attempt last year to get Children’s Aid, police, school board and universities under the Ombudsman’s umbrella was shot down by the ruling Liberal government, but Taylor said she figures there is a better chance of it passing doing one institution at a time.
“If we can get the Ombudsman to oversee it, hopefully it will help fix some issues,” says Taylor.
“It’s still in the early stages of research, but it’s definitely something I want to sink my teeth into.”