Green Party gained most from financial incentive to run female candidates

Vote totals show New Brunswick's Green Party gained the most from a much-publicized financial incentive created by the province to encourage women to run in last week's provincial election.

But the effect of the incentives was less than many expected, with Greens qualifying only for an extra $5,300 in public funding next year because of votes its women candidates received. 

Party president Vern Faulkner said the extra money will be welcome, but it played no role in the recruitment of 23 women who ran as part of the Green Party's 47-candidate slate in last week's election.

"Absolutely none," Faulkner said. "The candidates who came forward are the candidates who came forward."

Formula changed

The New Brunswick government distributes $658,000 annually to the province's five political parties based on their share of votes from the previous general election.  

But last year, to encourage parties to run more women, the formula was changed to make votes cast for women candidates worth 50 per cent more than votes cast for men in calculating how future funds will be distributed.

It appeared to be a major change, and it generated heated political debate inside the legislature among Liberals who proposed it and Progressive Conservatives who questioned everything from its constitutionality to how much money it might shift. 

"If a party goes out and gets more women candidates on ballots to run for office, then, as I said, everything else being equal, they could get a larger share of that pot of money,"  said then health minister Victor Boudreau, who pushed the change through the legislature in the spring of 2017.

Little effect on funding

But in practice the new formula has affected little. Only about $8,000 of the $658,000 funding pool shifted among the parties because of the extra emphasis placed on votes for women.

In part, that's because women ran for all parties and the majority of their votes largely balanced each other out.

The main exception was the Green Party. It received 12 per cent of the vote in last week's election overall but got 18 per cent of all votes cast for women candidates. That includes 38 per cent of the vote won by Megan Mitton, who was declared the winner in the riding of Memramcook-Tantramar.

Green Party success, People's Alliance loss

The success of the Green Party's female candidates helped the party's share of the funding pool jump from about $79,000 under the old funding formula to a little over $84,000.

Most of that extra funding came at the expense of Progressive Conservatives, who only ran 14 women in the election and lost a little more than $5,000 of their $210,000 allotment as vote totals for its women candidates trailed overall party results. 

We had more women running and that's a success. We also had more women elected and that is a true success.- Robyn Tingley, Women for 50%

The People's Alliance, who ran only eight women, also lost about $2,600 under the new funding formula, with most of that shifting to the NDP and Liberal parties.  

But although not moving large amounts of money around among parties, the incentives may have had other consequences.

Number of female candidates up

In total 93 women ran in the election, up from 71 in 2014, and total votes cast for women candidates jumped 30 per cent to more than 114,000.    

Robyn Tingley is one of the founding members of the group that was pushing for more women candidates in New Brunswick, Women for 50%. She said it is hard to know if increased participation this year was helped by parties acting on worries about the new funding formula. 

"I haven't analyzed it enough to give you a well-formed opinion on it," Tingley said. "But it's one tool in the tool kit. We had more women running and that's a success. We also had more women elected and that is a true success. We gained ground."

Tingley is president of GlassSky Inc. and said her company is just now undertaking a research project into the experiences women had running in the election to understand more about the issue.