annamie is very purposefully and consciously positioning herself as a candidate that is interested in increasing the "diversity" of the democratic representation in canada, which opens up the obvious question as to whether we're experiencing a deficit of representation in the country when it comes to...."diversity" is a liberal party code word that racist white liberals use to refer to black and brown people, so i'm going to kind of drop it, but it's kind of getting me to the point of my concern, here. does canada have an issue with the proportionality of it's democratic representation? when i look at the elections i've experienced, what i notice is that all of the major parties consistently run a very wide selection of candidates that are often consciously chosen to reflect the demographics in their ridings, but that the most "diverse" of these candidates very often fail to win their seats. and, thus, i think the question is a little more subtle, when being approached from a leadership perspective. if we decide that the existing representation is not proportional, is it because parties are not doing enough outreach to present a representative slate or is it because voters are making different choices than parties are? and, if it's the latter, what are the reasons for that? annamie also demonstrated a tendency to use the race card in cynical ways that were intended to tar her opponents, and i worry if that might backfire with the broader canadian population, which may be sympathetic to legitimate demonstrations of racism and quick to bolt on a candidate that tries to play the race card in disingenuous ways. the members will need to weigh all of these issues, if they decide to walk down this path, and weight the relative importance of focusing on increasing "diversity" in parliament in the context of tackling the climate crisis.