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Hey, maybe it is bad. Diversity can be annoying when enforced from above as a panacea, but it has upsides when it develops naturally (as, in Canada, it does). But if Nenshi is truly worked up about the problem, it’s not hard to see where the blame lies: With Calgary’s voters.

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One Twitter user called the mayor a “racist bigot” to which Nenshi dryly responded as an “interesting view.”

On Wednesday, Nenshi spoke at the Calgary Economic Development speaker series and said while the city has a diverse workforce, its upper management does not reflect that.

“We are lousy at promoting a diverse workforce. When you look at our management levels within the city, my top six managers, there are no women right now. The one woman retired. There are no people of a visible minority,” he said.

Nenshi added of the next 34 most senior leaders on staff, he could only think of one person from a visible minority and a “handful” of women.

However, many took the comments as a suggestion by Nenshi that the city should have an official quota system for hiring individuals based on sex and ethnic background, something the mayor did not say.

“We’ve got to do a better job. And we have to look internally at our own organization to determine what are the barriers that are in place towards people getting promoted into these jobs,” Nenshi said.

A prolific user of Twitter, Nenshi responded to a number of his critics directly Thursday.