MP Jody Wilson-Raybould announces she will not run in next election

On Thursday morning, Independent MP for Vancouver Granville Jody Wilson-Raybould announced that she would not be running in the next federal election.

In a statement posted to Twitter, Wilson-Raybould said the decision was not a "easy or quick decision to make."

Wilson-Raybould wrote that she would be leaving to spend more time with her family, as well as to "focus on other challenges and pursuits."

She also slammed a change that she says she’s seen in Parliament, that "it has become more and more toxic and ineffective while simultaneously marginalizing individuals from certain backgrounds."

Wilson-Raybould said she would continue her work on "Indigenous reconciliation, climate change, social and racial justice, and building an enduring economy" in different venues as her time serving as MP comes to an end.

Her letter goes on to cite a number of problems the country has been facing, including the ongoing pandemic and the discovery of unmarked graves at a number of former residential schools across the country.

"And that is the crux of the problem. We’ve been through and continue to go through incredibly challenging times: a pandemic and the first tentative steps down the road to recovery; shattering revelations about our history and the urgent need for true justice and reconciliation; a growing crisis of climate change that is setting villages on fire. If none of the can shake our partisan patterns of behaviour, what can?

"The fact that we even need to ask this question reveals the depth of change that is needed. And that change is not going to happen from within the system itself that needs to change."