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Dr. Sarah Taylor hit the ground running after she was officially named Canada’s Ambassador to the Kingdoms of Thailand and Cambodia, and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. In the first few weeks she was here she hosted the annual Canadian BBQ at her official residence, was a speaker at CanCham Thailand’s Women in Leadership conference, and was a panelist at the FCCT’s seminar on the Convention to Eliminate all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). And we get the feeling, she’s just getting started.

Dr. Taylor brings with her over three decades of experience dealing with Asia, including diplomatic assignments in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Jakarta. She also served as Deputy Head of Mission in China from 2011 to 2015.

The ambassador succeeded Donica Pottie, so after never having a woman as head of mission in Thailand the Canadian embassy in Bangkok now has had two in a row.climbing up the ranks.

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Dr. Taylor was born in Ottawa, which is actually rare for a member of Canada’s Foreign Service. Her father was in the foreign service, so she grew up moving around the world every three years or so. Half her childhood was in Ottawa; the other half, in various countries around the world. Her father, James, nicknamed “Si” was also an ambassador and his last post before he retired was as Canada’s ambassador to Japan. He also served as Ambassador to NATO; Director-General of European Affairs and Undersecretary of State for External Affairs and was the Chancellor of McMaster University.

Dr. Taylor says being the child of a diplomat affects you to one extreme or the other: either it gets in your blood and you want to travel the world or you say “that’s it, I have done enough moving, I am staying in one place.” This is even reflected in her own family where a sister is also in the foreign service, while the other three siblings have stayed home in Canada.

In university, Ambassador Taylor became interested in archaeology, anthropology, and East Asian studies. When she was at university, there was a big re-opening to China in the aftermath of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as the universities were re-established and China sent a large exhibition of archeological finds to Canada and other countries.

So along with archaeology, the ambassador decided to study Mandarin at the University of Toronto for her undergraduate degree. After graduation, she went on an exchange program to Beijing University, which was an eye-opener for her. She continued with her graduate studies at Cambridge University in the UK, starting with an M. Phil. and then earning a doctorate in East Asian archaeology.

Her initial interest was China, but as it was difficult to do fieldwork in China at the time, she gravitated to do work on Japan and Korea. When she came close to finishing her doctorate, she started questioning whether she wanted a career as an academic and the academic job market was quite difficult as well. So, she sat the Foreign Service exam in 1990, and the rest is history.

When the ambassador first joined the Foreign Service she spent a year in Ottawa on three short assignments. The first was on women’s rights in the bureau of human rights (that was when the UN and international organizations were starting to get more active on women’s rights in a global context leading up to the big Beijing Conference on Women in 1995. Before that, women’s rights were handled within the broader area of human rights; this was the first time Canada’s foreign ministry had a stand-alone division for women’s rights).
She also worked on the China Desk, managing a trip to Ottawa by the Dalai Lama (yes, she did get to meet and talk with him), and then she worked on the Gulf War Task Force, providing crisis management and support to Canadians affected in the region.

Dr Taylor feels she was fated to become our ambassador. The reason being, after a one-year stint in Hong Kong to brush up on her Mandarin, her first foreign posting was to Beijing from 1992-95. In the last year of her assignment, her two fellow political officers were Phil Calvert and Donica Pottie, her two predecessors as Canada’s ambassador to Thailand. The three of them have been friends to this day. Also, worth noting was that Canada’s ambassador to China at the time was Fred Bild who had previously served as – you guessed it – Canada’s ambassador to Thailand.

Ambassador Taylor then returned to Ottawa to work in the Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy’s office – a lot was going on including formalizing the Ottawa Treaty on Landmines, and establishing diplomatic retains with North Korea. The ambassador says that at that time we developed a lot of programming in areas that crossed over between foreign policy and development assistance – the so-called human security agenda.

With the Cold War over, there was growing concerns about global issues like terrorism and transnational crime, and ways needed to be found to engage on those issues and find needed resources for programs. Traditionally the people who spent money on programming were development agencies, not foreign ministries. Minister Axworthy identified that gap and set up human security programs that we still use today. For example, under these programs, since 2010 Canada has spent about CAN$16 million in ASEAN to develop the capacity to fight both terrorism and crime.

From 1998-2000, the Ambassador was Deputy Director of the Southeast Asian division working on ASEAN and political relations with each member nation. It was an interesting time in the aftermath of the fall of Suharto and the Asian financial crisis.

Next up, from 2000-2003, she was political counselor in Jakarta, in Indonesia’s early democratic period. Following the Bali bombing, the focus of her work in Indonesia shifted more towards counter-terrorism.

In late 2003, she went back to Ottawa to headquarters and worked as Deputy Director and later Director of the Development Policies and Institutions Division. This division worked closely with the then CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) and Finance Canada on the coordination of Canada’s international development policy and its role in the international financial institutions.

In 2006, she took a detour and joined the Privy Council Office (PCO), as director responsible for the strategic direction and the oversight of assessments relating to the Asia Pacific region within the International Assessments secretariat. In 2008, she was made Deputy Executive Director of the secretariat and from 2010-2011 she was the acting Executive Director.

Next, she was named deputy head of mission in Beijing from 2011-2015, the number two to the Ambassador. This was at a period of high activity in the Canada-China relationship with expanding trade and visits by the Governor-General and the Prime Minister.

From 2016 to 2019, Dr Taylor was back in Ottawa where she served as Director-General for North Asia and Oceania, and as “Champion for Women” in Global Affairs Canada, Canada’s foreign ministry. She was tasked with advancing equity for women and women’s leadership in the foreign ministry. Today, almost half of our Canada’s ambassadors and heads of mission abroad are now women.

Canada has long-standing employment equity legislation that recognizes four groups that were, and sometimes still are, underrepresented in the public service. Global Affairs has a champion for each group (women, visible minorities, persons with disabilities, and First Nations). Part of their goal is to close gaps in representation and more generally to make Global Affairs a more welcoming and diverse work environment. Seen from outside Canada does well on gender equity, but internally the Ambassador says we still have some gaps: Global Affairs is still short of women in our senior rotational Foreign Service roles, in senior management, and in the IT sector.

The Here and Now

The ambassador has a number of objectives and roles; a key one is to advance trade relations between Canada and Thailand. As such, the ambassador says part of Canada’s trade diversification strategy is pursuing an inclusive approach to trade that seeks to ensure that all segments of society, both domestically and internationally, can take advantage of the opportunities that flow from trade and investment.

This approach is enhanced by an ongoing dialogue with a broad range of Canadians, including groups often underrepresented in international trade, such as women, SMEs, and Indigenous people.

The aim is to ensure that more Canadians benefit from increased trade and investment by ensuring a more diverse group engages in international trade, and by including in our international trade agreements provisions on labour rights, the environment, SMEs, gender equality, and Indigenous peoples.

Ambassador Taylor believes that trade policies should be responsive to the interests and opportunities of the many and not just the few. In doing so, more Canadians can be better equipped to build their own prosperity and to contribute more to broader economic, social, and environmental objectives.

The ambassador says by applying a feminist perspective to trade policy we can help ensure that Canada’s free trade agreements do not perpetuate economic barriers that often work against women.

That’s why she says events such as the “Women in Leadership” conference are so important. “By promoting and supporting women’s leadership in business in Thailand, we are contributing not just to helping women succeed, but also to advancing the Thai economy and to sustainable prosperity for

In house, the ambassador says the Bangkok mission must “walk our own talk” and look at hosting gender-balanced events, not “panels”, as well as promoting career development and support for female staff members and an inclusive workplace.

Ambassador Taylor is keen to increase the volume of trade between the two countries as she sees lots of unexplored potential; she notes Canada and Thailand have a smaller trading relationship than Canada and Vietnam, even though Thailand is the wealthier country.

And the ambassador notes that if Thailand joins the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), or if Canada and ASEAN hammer out a free trade agreement, tariffs would go down significantly and trade between the two countries could increase considerably.

Canada is seen positively in Thailand but still doesn’t have a high profile here – the ambassador says the embassy has to make better use of social media, the wave of the future. “You don’t need a huge presence, you just need to be smart about it — but we really need to up our game when it comes to our social media presence.”

The ambassador’s son, Cass, is in high school here in Bangkok, while her husband, Patrick Kavanagh, is a professional writer who worked with the IDRC for many years. He has also published a novel, partly based on his experiences growing up in Newfoundland called, Gaff Topsails. The ambassador’s daughter Mairi is currently finishing her final year of high school in Ottawa.

We are lucky to have Dr. Taylor as our ambassador in Thailand and she is backed by a superb team led by superstar Senior Trade Commissioner Sanjeev Chowdhury and his all-star team at the Trade Commissioner’s Service. The ambassador also has great help from her Executive Assistant Susan Shu-Mei Hsu, Social Secretary Darin Dararuja, and Khun Akapong Sungtet, her trusted chauffeur.

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Ambassador Sarah Taylor bids adieu

Rarely do I do an exit interview with a departing Canadian ambassador to Thailand. But Dr. Sarah Taylor made such an impact in her time here though that I thought it was only appropriate. Dr Taylor and her Senior Trade Commissioner, Sanjeev Chowdhury, formed a dynamic duo during their posting that has seen the Canadian embassy, CanCham Thailand and the Canadian community in Thailand become closer than they have ever been before.

First a little background. Ambassador Taylor arrived in Thailand to do archaeological fieldwork back in 1985 excavating two sites, both which have become seminal in Thai archaeology. The first excavation was at Ban Don Ta Phet, near Kanchanaburi, run by Ian Glover out of the University of London. She spent three months living in a wooden house on stilts in a rural setting with buffaloes running around in the nearby fields. So, she really got a feel of Thai traditional life.

The other site was at Koh Phanom Di near Phanat Nikom, and it was run by Professor Charles Higham of the University of Otago, who partnered with Thai archaeologist Rachanie Thosarat. In Phanat Nikom, a small provincial town in Chonburi, she met many aid workers and Cambodian refugees who had fled the horrors of the Khmer Rouge and were looking to be resettled or return home. Finds from both those sites are now on display at the National Museum.

Ambassador Taylor went on to graduate studies and received her doctorate from Cambridge University, where she had earlier received her Master’s Degree. After graduation, she realized there weren’t many jobs available for western scholars specializing in East Asian archaeology. She and many others of her generation came to the job market at a difficult time with very few academic jobs available. So, she chose to follow her father James “Si” Taylor and chose a career in diplomacy, joining the Department of Foreign Affairs as a foreign service officer in 1990.

Many were surprised to hear that Thailand was her first posting as head of mission. But she was well prepared, having been the deputy head of mission in Beijing, a position much less visible to the outside (only Canada’s biggest missions have a deputy). There she was in charge of three areas: the political, economic and public diplomacy sections. The deputy was the backstop to the ambassador and took much of the internal management burden off of him, as the Ambassador had so many external commitments. At times, when the ambassador was out of the country, she also acted as the Chargé d’affaires. She learned a lot from Ambassadors David Mulroney and Yves St Jacques, both seasoned professionals. Being number two in a big embassy like Beijing, London, Tokyo or Washington can actually entail more responsibility than being the head of a smaller mission.

Interestingly, as a response to SARS, the Canadian embassy in Beijing had a specialized health unit to exchange information between Canadian and Chinese public health systems during her tenure there (2011-2015).

Ambassador Taylor arrived in Bangkok in January of 2020 with credentials (a set of letters) from then Governor General of Canada Julie Payette for the King of Thailand, the King of Cambodia and the President of Laos. The credentials are presented in person, and Ambassador Taylor was able to present these credentials to Laos, but the embassy was working on the Ambassador’s trip to Cambodia when the borders were sealed. COVID also delayed her official meeting with the King of Thailand, but she was given working credentials until she was able to present her credentials later that year.

Looking back on her time here, Ambassador Taylor says, “It was a wonderful posting, even with the onset of COVID in the middle of everything. You are responsible for three very interesting countries (Thailand, Cambodia & Laos). There’s a lot of interest and engagement with Canada on multiple, different fronts. It’s an all-service post, as we are very active in a wide range of issues, we really do run the full gamut. Bangkok’s also a great place to live, despite the traffic.

“With regards to COVID, none of us expected what was to come, especially the global impact.

“When you first arrive, you want to build networks and contacts immediately, so you accept every invitation. You want to find out who is interesting to talk to and what are the issues on people’s minds. You want to build relationships with people you may need to consult with later. So, it was difficult to manage the crisis and not really have the full network of contacts in place.

“We have a very good team in the embassy in Bangkok. And we had well-seasoned officers in Laos and Cambodia who had been in place for some time. They all coped and managed very well despite some challenging circumstances.

“One example was that there was a cruise ship in the region that couldn’t land anywhere due to fears of COVID until Cambodia agreed to take them. Many of the passengers were Canadian and they were then unexpectedly stuck in Cambodia trying to get home. Our staff worked tirelessly to expedite their safe return.

“In Thailand, we helped disseminate information on vaccines and helped distribute and get people PPE. We also helped Canadians get vaccines. Some people were angry and frustrated that the Canadian government couldn’t send vaccines, but that was the responsibility of the Thai Ministry of Public Health. We did lobby the Thai government to make sure that foreign residents and tourists stuck here could get access to vaccines. We also did most of this with only 50 percent of our staff or less on site at ant one time.

“As you can imagine the pandemic did take its toll on our staff, too, so we put a staff member in charge of group mental health & wellness. This person created many activities and events to keep the crew together including establishing a buddy system, having online get-togethers and cooking courses, even a virtual online Songkran costume competition. I feel strongly that moving forward, this is something that needs to be built more formally into our crisis management protocol. And, finally, every ambassador will tell you that they depend on their non-rotational local staff for success. They are the core and form the continuity of any mission.”

What activities occurred during your tenure that you were most proud of? “The 60th anniversary of Thai-Canada relations in 2021 was a success. We had a wonderful photo exhibit at Icon Siam with the Canadian father/son team of Randy & Spencer VanDerStarren called “Take Your Seat, Together”. We also had a special anniversary reception attended by Thai foreign minister Don Pramudwinai. And we worked with the Thai Ministry of Culture who published a work of Canadian literature in Thai and Thai literature in English.”

“We had a number of high-profile visits, including by Prime Minister Trudeau (to Thailand and Cambodia), Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly (to Cambodia), and the Minister of International Trade Mary Ng (three visits to Thailand, one to Cambodia).

“Both the ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh and the APEC summit here were a huge success in raising Canada’s profile. I received Prime Minister Trudeau twice as head of mission three days apart, first in Phnom Penh and then here in Bangkok. It was by far the most senior meeting between the Thai, Cambodian and Canadian governments in a long time. This high level of engagement provides a forward impetus to the relationship.

“At the ASEAN summit, an agreement was reached to elevate Canada’s relationship with ASEAN to a strategic partnership. Then at the G-20 summit in Indonesia, Canada announced a new Indo-Pacific strategy recognizing the economic and geo-political trends and shifts that are going on in this region and how Canada sees itself as a major player in the region and wants to become more involved. What we do and how we engage in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos will be an important part of the strategic partnership and our Indo-Pacific strategy.

“One of my main responsibilities was to increase bilateral trade between Thailand and Canada. Our trade team’s performance was off the charts with their KPIs despite COVID. When I arrived, trade between Thailand and Canada was around $CAD 4.6 billion. My goal was to hit $CAD 5 billion before I left, but we hit 5 billion in 2021, went over that last year and will even exceed that further this year - a new record for bilateral trade between the two countries. Sanjeev (Chowdhury, Senior Trade Commissioner) has been able to keep the team focused on their KPIs while, at the same time, keeping sight of the bigger picture and where the opportunities are.

“Canada and ASEAN have also launched negotiations for a Canada-ASEAN free trade agreement. Thailand is, by far, the biggest trade market in the region that we are not linked to yet by an FTA.”

Any advice for her successor: “Spend more time in Cambodia and Laos if they can, as I couldn’t travel there in the first two years of my posting.”

Thank you Ambassador Taylor for all your hard work and dedication – your successor has very big shoes to fill, indeed, and you will be missed. (Sarah Taylor is now Canada's ambassador to Russia).