A House of Commons committee is making a cross-party call for the federal government to offer financial incentives to political parties that nominate more women candidates to run for election. One potential fix, the committee says, would be to offer cash incentives, such as subsidies, to encourage parties to help more women get nominated and then elected. Witnesses and experts who spoke to the committee cited New Brunswick’s example of changing the formula for the per-vote subsidy to favour female candidates in provincial elections. Votes received by female candidates are weighted 1.5 times greater than votes received by male candidates in the province, which encourages parties to run women in competitive ridings where they are more likely to win. The committee said Ottawa should also consider encouraging parties to set voluntary quotas for how many female candidates they plan to field and publicly report on efforts to recruit female candidates after every general election.

Source: National Post April 12, 2019 19:30 UTC