A New Political Party: Canadian Future Party - will it manage to get off the ground?

By Staff

September 10^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

The following was taken from a CBC broadcast of an interview with Dominic Cardy, the leader of a new federal political party – the Canadian Future Party that is pitching itself as a centrist alternative to what we now have. The interim party leader says they are looking to fill a gap Canadians are looking for

“We’ve moved away from a policy and tone of moderation and keen judgment and civility, and when I speak with Canadians, said Cardy. “People  say they’d like to see more of that. So we do think that we are helping to fill a vacuum that exists.

CBC: So give me the elevator pitch. What’s the Canadian Future Party all about? And why are you launching this now?

Domenic Cardy was very active in New Brunswick.

Cardy: “We want Canada to go, not left, not right, but forward. We think it’s time for a policy politics that’s focused on being brave, being evidence based, and delivering results, because if democracy doesn’t deliver then people are going to lose faith in it.

“We’re seeing that right now with the Liberals who are trapped in the politics of the 1990s and Mr. Poilievre, who perhaps is trapped in the politics of the 1930s  – we want to talk about Canada moving ahead with clear, decisive plans for dealing with some of the big challenges that bluntly, Mr. Poilievre and Mr. Trudeau are simply not being honest with Canadians about wanting defence, immigration, housing and so on.

CBC: “I want to get to Mr.  Poilievre in a second. Let’s give you a chance to kind of spell out what you’re all about. As you know, with the established party brands, people kind of have a vague idea of what they’re going to get right. With the Liberals, you’re going to get socially progressive, a bigger government. The Conservatives kind of anti-tax, tough on crime, smaller government. The Green Party, obviously, quite self-explanatory. What are some of the key foundational principles of the Canadian Future Party. What is your brand?

Cardy: “So we line up with the 70% or so of Canadians who say they see themselves in the middle and have concerns about the slide of the liberal and conservative parties towards the extremes. So we’re a party that is liberal on social questions and responsible when it comes to fiscal issues, because if we don’t have a government that delivers results, which means it has to be well run.

“People lose faith in it. And when people lose faith in their government, they look for alternatives. And I think one of the best ways to sum it up is, let’s look at the immigration crisis. Mr. Trudeau team created a political crisis by seizing political control of the temporary foreign workers and student visa programs. The other parts of the immigration system continue to work just fine. The crisis has come because the Liberals ignored the gatekeepers.

Cardy: “We believe in expertise…”

“So when Mr. Poilievre talks about getting rid of gatekeepers, we’re talking about duplicating triplicating, quadruplicating, the sort of crisis we’ve seen in immigration. We believe in expertise, but we believe that the experts have to show again that they can deliver, and we haven’t done a good job in the political elite of doing that over the last number of years.

“If we can’t get back to a government that actually shows results for Canadian citizens, we’re going to see that slide towards populism, which is exactly what Mr.  Poilievre is taking advantage of. But at the same time, there’s a lot of people who don’t feel comfortable with his slide towards extremism and want to see a change from Mr. Trudeau, and we’re there to offer a sensible, evidence based solutions, set of solutions that we hope will attract attention from Canadians, and we’ll get to work on pushing that starting today.

CBC: “You’re a former provincial Progressive Conservative. The party’s interim president Tara McPhail says she’s a former conservative as well. Is this movement that you’re creating that you’re launching today? Is it a direct backlash against sort of the right wing, more populist style that Pierre  Poilievre   has adopted? You mentioned, you said it’s from the 1930s  – maybe elaborate on that, and maybe speak to what his role was really in the formation of this party.

Cardy: “It’s not just Mr. Pollievre, and it’s not just the Conservative Party, it’s our politics writ large. The Liberal party is falling into the same trap, the falling into social media driven, algorithm driven extremism, appealing to people who are further and further away from the mainstream, further and further away from offering concrete solutions to real problems.

“ I don’t want to hear any more apologies for things that Canada has done wrong in the past. I want to see solutions to what’s wrong with Canada now. Mr. Poilievre spends his time talking about Canada being broken. Canada is a fantastic country. We’re not broken. There’s no end to what we can do. But we have people who’ve come to join the new party who are former members of Stephen Harper’s cabinet, former members of Jack Layton’s team:  elected folks who are sitting in the House of Commons, former Liberal organizers, Greens, New Democrats, people from across the political spectrum who are all united: there’s something seriously wrong with our politics, that this approach of just using social media and leaders offices to run political parties divorced from MPS being given any real power to express their opinions and vote the way they feel they should in the House of Commons.

I was a Cabinet Minister in New Brunswick from 2018 to 2020.

“This is a problem that all the parties share, and it’s one where to use that example. We’re proposing a concrete change. Canada copied the British parliamentary system when we built this country. One thing we didn’t copy was the caucus system that allows back bench MPs in the UK to vote against their leaders if the Leader’s office can’t convince them to support them. In Canada, we treat our MPs like sheep. They just vote yay, yay, yay, nay, nay, nay, depending on what the leader says, there’s no reason we can’t change that. That takes will from political party leaders, and that’s what we’re here to say we’re going to do. And I have a record on this, that 2018 to 20 in New Brunswick, when I was a cabinet minister, I helped write the platform in 2018 we ran the government that way through the early stage of covid, creating an all party committee we got like a war cabinet to help manage the province during that crisis. That’s exactly the sort of creative approach we want to see brought to other crises facing Canada.

CBC: “We asked Poilievre spokesperson about your party, and this is what he told us, he said, quote, We are not paying much attention to what the former NDP leader says, and neither are Canadians. So obviously he’s referencing your past as NDP in New Brunswick, you were the leader of that party. Provincially. What do you say to them? It seems like they’re quite dismissive of you and your effort.

Cardy: “What we have seen, which you’ve probably noticed over the last couple of weeks, Mr. Poilievre  claiming that his party is the centrist party. Tory influencers online trying to pass that same message. They see the same polls we do. They know that there’s a lot of Canadians, a majority of Canadians, who want to see a change, who are tired of Mr. Trudeau over promising and under delivering, but at the same time are really concerned about Mr. Pollievre’s drift towards populist extremism. So we’re here to offer an alternative to that. And so of course, they’re going to say insulting things. You know, of the other things we’re not going to do, get into that sort of gutter pop sort of gutter politics, we want to focus on what we’re going to do differently. Sure, we’ll be sharp when we have to be, but things like that are exactly why we need to change.

Cardy: “I’d say it’s extremely dangerous.”

CBC: “You say populist extremism, but it seems to have an appeal, right? I mean, he’s leading over the Liberals by 20 points in the polls. He’s at 43 points. You know, if we’re to believe the aggregators, that’s a huge lead. He’s poised to form a massive majority government if election were held today. So that seems to have a lot of appeal among people, right? I mean, there might be, you might quibble with his tone and tenor, but it’s certainly resonating.

Cardy: “Well, first, wouldn’t quibble with it. I’d say it’s extremely dangerous. And one of the things I think we’ve got to listen to is the voices around the world who’ve had their experiences with radical, populist governments on the left and the right in recent years is how dangerous they are, how they don’t make life better for people. So putting that aside, absolutely, he’s doing well, because right now his party is the only one that’s seen as an alternative to Mr. Trudeau. The NDP have hooked themselves, possibly permanently to the Liberals, certainly for the next election, they’re going to be judged on the same criteria that Mr. Trudeau team will be. The Greens, I think, have broadly succeeded to convince Canadians that climate change is real. Certainly, that’s not something we’re going to waste time on. In the Canadian future party, we believe climate change is real, then you’ve got Mr. Bernier party, who are just grumpy that they’ve been out ring out right wing extremists by Mr. Poilievre.

CBC: ” You mentioned the Green Party, as you know, in our first past the post system, it’s really tough for smaller parties to actually win a seat. It took the Green Party 30 years from their foundation to when they actually won a seat with Elizabeth May. What makes the Canadian future party different? How can you actually win a seat in a system that really does not advantage upstart parties like yours.

Cardy: “First that’s absolutely the case. We recognize the challenge we’re facing, and we’re only embarking on this project the people around me, who, again, come from all parties and none, who recognize the crisis Canada is facing. The reason why we’re doing this is because we want to offer Canadians that alternative, and Canadians have a choice going into the next election about whether they like that or not. Our job is to present a positive, well thought out platform and a team of candidates who could manage Canada.

CBC: “You mentioned candidates you’ve you’ve named at least one for the upcoming federal by election in Quebec and La Salle Marg you will name one in Manitoba as well. What is success look like? What are you expecting to see in those by elections?

Cardy: “We’re going to be there with a team as new and fresh a party. It’s up to Canadians to decide.”

Cardy: “In those by elections, we want to get our name out there and start to share our vision for Canadian Canadian politics longer term, our goal is to try and win as many seats as possible. I’ve never understood some folks in politics is how we’re just here to try and influence the other guys. In my time in the NDP, that was often a problem. So we want to try and win, but what we really want to try and do is change Canadian politics. I don’t care about party labels. If the liberals or Tories take all of our platform ideas and start recruiting people who believe in those same sort of mainstream, moderate values that most Canadians share. All power to them. If they don’t, we’re going to be there with a team as new and fresh a party as we might be to offer them that alternative, and we’ll see whether or not that catches fire. It’s up to Canadians to decide. That’s democracy.

CBC: “All right, let’s leave it there. Dominic Cardy is the interim leader of the Canadian Future party.

Deeper dive on Dominic Cardy

Dominic William Cardy MLA (born 25 July 1970) is a Canadian politician and Member of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick. From the 2018 New Brunswick general election until his expulsion from the caucus in October 2022, Cardy represented the electoral district of Fredericton West-Hanwell for the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick. He now sits as an independent. During his time in government he was the Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development under Blaine Higgs. Since September 2023, Cardy has been the interim leader of the Canadian Future Party, a newly-formed moderate centrist federal political party. Prior to being elected to the New Brunswick legislature, Cardy served as chief of staff of the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick caucus and had previously been leader of the New Brunswick New Democratic Party from 2011 to 2017.

Cardy resigned as party leader, as well as resigning his membership of both the federal and New Brunswick NDP, on 1 January 2017, complaining of party infighting which he attributed to “destructive forces” colluding with CUPE New Brunswick, the province’s largest public-sector union against his leadership. Cardy said that he “cannot lead a party where a tiny minority of well-connected members refuse to accept the democratic will of the membership.” He added that “[l]imited time and energy is being wasted on infighting before the election,” and that “‘Some New Democrats unfortunately believe change and openness have had their time. They want to return to an old NDP of true believers, ideological litmus tests and moral victories.”^[ Cardy claimed that what he described as his “progressive” platform had been thwarted by both federal and provincial party members and denounced the federal party’s non-interventionist stance on the Syrian Civil War as antithetical to his beliefs.

Cardy’s appointment as strategic issues director for the opposition Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick was announced by party leader Blaine Higgs on 27 January 2017. Cardy said it is “not my intention” to run for a legislative seat as a Progressive Conservative candidate but that a “great many” of his former colleagues in the NDP would be joining the Progressive Conservatives.

In April 2017, Cardy was promoted to the position of chief of staff to the official opposition New Brunswick Progressive Conservative caucus. Later that month he endorsed Maxime Bernier for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Cardy was elected in the 2018 provincial election as the PC candidate in Fredericton West-Hanwell. He had run unsuccessfully in 2014 in the same riding as a New Democrat.

Cardy was re-elected in the 2020 provincial election.

Cardy was appointed as Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development on 9 November 2018.Minister Cardy spearheaded a plan to remove the Confucius Institute from all New Brunswick schools. While the educational programs for elementary and middle schools were removed for the 2019–2020 school year, high school programs will not be removed until 2022.Cardy resigned from his position as Minister of Education and Early Childhood Education on October 13, 2022. Announcing his resignation on Twitter, Cardy explained that “At some point, working style and values have to matter.” His resignation letter offered a more detailed explanation, citing Premier Higgs’ behaviour in a series of incidents. Cardy initially committed to staying on as a Progressive Conservative but was expelled from caucus a day after resigning as minister.  He was replaced as minister by Bill Hogan.Cardy remained in the legislature as an independent MLA for the rest of his term, while announcing he would not be running as a candidate in the 2024 New Brunswick general election.Cardy said he would be voting for Susan Holt and the New Brunswick Liberal Party in the upcoming election in June 2024. On September 20, 2023, Cardy announced that he was in the process of founding a new federal political party, named the Canadian Future Party to occupy the middle ground between the Justin Trudeau-led Liberal Party of Canada and the Pierre Poilievre-led Conservative Party of Canada. Prior to its launch as a party, the group had been known first as “Centre Ice Conservatives” and then as “Centre Ice Canadians.” On July 22, 2024, Elections Canada recognized the Canadian Future Party as eligible for registration, pending it standing a candidate for election.In July 2024, Cardy was arrested in Toronto for disturbing the peace after engaging in a confrontation at a pro-Palestine protest. According to Cardy, he chanted “Free Palestine from Hamas”. Authorities stated that Cardy “behaved in a confrontational manner towards other protesters and did not follow police directions” to leave the area. He was released without charges.