New federal party looks for ‘lightning’ in the mushy middle

“This is the most uphill of all uphill struggles, trying to break the two-party duopoly in Canada,” admits Dominic Cardy, newly crowned leader of the Canadian Future Party. The new party aims to occupy what it sees as the middle ground in Canadian politics, between Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives.

Energized by the party’s recent and inaugural national convention in Ottawa attended by 112 enthusiastic souls, and excited to be bringing a brand-new political party to voters in a much-anticipated federal election, Dominic is pitching the Canadian Future Party as a political home for moderate centrist Canadians exhausted by polarized politics.

I am skeptical, of the need for the party, of its strategy and of their chances.

“It’s the mushy middle, Dominic,” I tell him. “Didn’t the U.S. election teach you anything? Searching for the middle ground in politics is a fool’s errand.” In Alberta, I remind him, proponents of the Alberta Party, a centrist provincial party — likewise appealing to voters weary of angry, divisive politics — couldn’t gain a firm toehold, even with star candidates.

At 54, Dominic is no fool. He’s whipped up a lot of political change, most notably, bringing the NDP back to life in New Brunswick a decade ago, even recruiting a slate of NDP candidates that included several prominent former Conservatives and Liberal politicians. In 2017, Dominic turned his back on the NDP to join Blaine Higgs’s PCs, as chief of staff and ultimately as an MLA and minister, successfully running as a PC candidate in New Brunswick’s 2018 and 2020 provincial elections.

In 2022, Dominic resigned as Higgs’s minister of education and early childhood education, and was kicked out of the PC caucus. He didn’t run in the October 2024 New Brunswick election that Higgs lost to Susan Holt’s Liberals. He doesn’t take credit for Higgs’s loss: “People in New Brunswick take credit for that,” he shrugs, “I realized that change needed to happen earlier than some folks.”

People have labelled Dominic a malcontent, but I’d call him principled. It’s no easy thing to sit as an independent (I know from experience) and when you track this guy’s choices — supporting the proposed Energy East pipeline and opposing the Leap Manifesto and its ban on hydrocarbons as a card-carrying New Democrat; spearheading the removal of the Confucius Institute from New Brunswick’s schools as the Tory education minister; getting arrested for disturbing the peace in Toronto this July for chanting “Free Palestine from Hamas” at an anti-Israel protest — there’s a pattern of risk-taking that’s not typical of political actors.

When we meet on Zoom, Dominic is cooling his heels at a hotel in Toronto, disgruntled that Air Canada has cancelled his scheduled flight home to New Brunswick. As leader of the Canadian Future Party, he must decide where to run. “I’ve got good recognition in Atlantic Canada,” he shares, “and a good base there. The problem is that if you’re Canadian and live anywhere outside of the centre of the country, as you know, Air Canada is not your friend.” All to mean, he plans to run in either Fredericton or Ottawa.

The timing of the next federal election is the subject of much speculation, by party insiders and talking heads. For a new party, this timing is pivotal; riding associations have yet to be set up and candidates vetted. Dominic says he’s asked his party to be ready for an election from March 2025 onwards.

“We’ve got to be ready to build a machine to see what happens if lightning strikes and the power turns on,” Dominic declares. “Ultimately, if Canadians want this party, and if we have good candidates, and we have the chance to send a team to Ottawa, then I want those folks to be ready to hit the ground running.” It’s an ambitious plan, for a brand new party.

I ask him: Has the failure of the Democrats in the U.S. hardened Trudeau’s resolve to stay put?

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Dominic responds, “I mean, he is, if nothing else, the Joe Biden of Canada, and I do not mean that particularly as a compliment.” Dominic’s even more scathing of the NDP leader: “I don’t know how Mr. Singh is able to persist in his job after the humiliation of doing the big divorce announcement, and then announcing, ‘We might be divorced, but we’re still going to sleep together,’” he chuckles.

“I would guess the NDP would like to reassert some vague form of autonomy,” he speculates, “given the position they’ve put themselves in, and perhaps we go for one (an election) in the spring.”

Dressed in a black suit jacket and black, collarless shirt, blonde stubble on his chin, Dominic projects a faintly clerical vibe. But he’s not preachy. I ask about the pin on his lapel, bearing the flags of Canada and Ukraine. “When the war started,” he says, “I took off my MLA pin and put on a Ukraine pin and said I’d wear it every day until the war was ended. It’s been on for three years nearly…so hopefully not much longer.” Dominic’s travelled to Ukraine, a couple of times, he says, and adds, “New Brunswick was the only province that gave money directly to the Ukrainian armed forces.” He was the cabinet minister who brought that proposal forward.

Dominic’s career has been defined by that kind of gesture. He argues voters are looking for a bold kind of middle.

“The key, to me, for the new party success … is for us not to be mushy,” Dominic asserts. “I’m talking about a party that is extremely aggressive and hard-edged. When I talked about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, I’m not sitting here talking about arguing back and forth about UN resolutions. I went out and got arrested in the streets of Toronto saying it is unacceptable for a terrorist organization to be able to rally freely while people espousing the official position of the government of Canada are arrested.”

And yet, what the Canadian Future Party is selling is arguably stability — perhaps even a throwback.

“Success is, five and then 10 years down the road, my country’s still looking somewhat like it did, say, in 2014 or ’15,” Dominic asserts. “A liberal, open, democratic society with rights protected despite the fact the world has become ever more chaotic and difficult and dangerous.”

Dominic says he’s a realist, and evidence-based; he accepts the chances of this project succeeding are small. But he believes he’s answering a clarion call for an alternative political party that is fiscally disciplined and socially liberal. A September 2024 Angus Reid poll indicated one-third of Canadians saw themselves as political “orphans.”

“If people don’t want this party, they’ve got a democratic choice to say they don’t,” Dominic concludes, “and I can go and find something else to do with my time.”

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