Richmond County Won't Fund Training For Female Election Candidates

ARICHAT – A majority of Richmond County’s municipal councillors, including Warden Brian Marchand, are balking at a request to sponsor two candidates for an upcoming training session for women hoping to run as municipal election candidates this fall.

The request came from Port Hawkesbury Mayor Brenda Chisholm-Beaton, who is the co-chair of a new organization called Government FOCUS (Female Objectives Cape Breton-U’namak’I-Strait). Comprised of sixteen officials from municipal councils and indigenous communities across Cape Breton, Government FOCUS will host a two-day Leadership School for Women this coming March.

However, when Richmond County councillor Jason MacLean made a motion at the county’s regular public session in February to use the municipal Web site to seek out potential applicants to the March event, fellow councillors James Goyetche and Gilbert Boucher responded by saying that prospective female candidates should pay their own way, just as male candidates are expected to do.

Goyetche, a former Richmond County Warden now serving in the municipality’s District One, remarked that he was surprised at the concept that he would support the spending of municipal funds to recruit candidates “to run against me” in October’s municipal elections, ultimately dismissing the concept as “kind of stupid.”

Goyetche also pointed out that two former Richmond County wardens, Gail Johnson and Madeline Libbus, along with long-running councillors such as the now-retired Shirley McNamara, had enjoyed electoral success over the past 40 years without requiring anyone to sponsor them for training.

In the end, MacLean’s motion to seek out candidates for the Leadership School for Women failed to get a seconder, leaving the issue closed for the time being.

Following the February 24 council meeting at the Richmond Municipal Building in Arichat, Warden Marchand said he would have been more inclined to speak up in favour of the municipal candidates’ training school if men were also allowed to participate.

“There didn’t seem to be any option for that,” Marchand told reporters in the minutes following the adjournment of the council session.

There are no women serving on Richmond Municipal Council at the present time, with Marchand, MacLean, Goyetche, Boucher and District Two councillor Alvin Martell comprising the current council makeup.