Canadian MP not seeking re-election due to 'toxic' Parliament

Ottawa, July 9 Canadian Independent MP Jody Wilson-Raybould said that she will not seek a re-election since Parliament has "become more and more toxic and ineffective".

"From my seat over the last six years, I have noticed a change in Parliament, a regression. It has become more and more toxic and ineffective while simultaneously marginalizing individuals from certain backgrounds," Wilson-Raybould said in an open letter posted on her Twitter account on Thursday.

Wilson-Raybould, also a former Justice Minister, announced in the letter that she will not run again in the next federal election.

She expressed her disappointment on the excessive power of Canada's political parties and unelected officials in the Prime Minister's Office, as well as the "out-of-date norms" of the first-past-the-post electoral system.

"Federal politics is, in my view, increasingly a disgraceful triumph of harmful partisanship over substantive action," she said.

Wilson-Raybould pointed that partisanship needs to be reduced and structural changes made to the democratic system in order for the country to tackle major challenges, including recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, reconciliation with indigenous people and climate change.

"It came about through long reflection on and writing about my own experiences in Ottawa, insights others have shared with me, and a growing realization of the depth of the shifts needed in our political culture."

Wilson-Raybould was first elected as a Liberal MP in 2015, becoming Canada's first indigenous Justice Minister.

But she resigned from Justin Trudeauled government and was subsequently ousted from the Liberal Party following the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

At the centre of the scandal were her allegations that Trudeau and his office pressed her into securing a deferred prosecution agreement for the Quebec engineering firm SNC-Lavalin that would have shielded it from prosecution over corruption charges related to bribes to Libyan officials.

The allegations led to a series of explosive committee hearings that eventually led to the ouster of two cabinet ministers, and the resignation of Trudeau's chief secretary.

Wilson-Raybould was re-elected as an Independent MP in the 2019 federal election.