The upstart Canadian Future Party launches into byelections — does it have a shot?
Former B.C. premier says centrist movement would have done better by not forming a new party
As the Canadian Future Party officially introduced its candidate for the LaSalle-Émard-Verdun byelection on Thursday — a day after the party's formal launch — questions lingered about voters' appetite for a new option on the ballot.
Mark Khoury will run for the party in the Montreal riding, while Zbig Strycharzy was added to the ballot Thursday for the Elmwood-Transcona byelection.
Neither of the candidates' biographies on the Canadian Future Party website mention them having run in any previous election or having any prior political affiliations.
And while interim party leader Dominic Cardy told reporters at the launch in Ottawa on Wednesday that "the polls" show Canadians want an alternative to the Liberals and Conservatives, some of Canada's pollsters tell CBC News it's too early to tell if there's a real desire for a new party.
"I'm not sure if we can really see that there's a lot of appetite for another party. Maybe for different leaders," said Éric Grenier, a poll aggregator with The Writ.
"You could say that there's the space for it, but I don't think there's a slam-dunk case that people are desperate for a new party somewhere in the centre."
In May, the Angus Reid Institute released a study that said the leaders of Canada's main three political parties today are less popular than any of their predecessors over the past 50 years.
"It does speak to an enthusiasm gap, or a likeability gap, that may reflect the fact that some Canadians may be feeling politically orphaned," said institute president Shachi Kurl.
"But measuring the true size of that universe, and then understanding the extent to which those voters — however many of them there are — are wiling to get behind a political party led by a relative unknown, not a national household name, I think it's a very long road."
'The precedent isn't very good'
When asked to compare the Canadian Future Party to previous efforts to create new federal parties (not including new parties born of splits in older parties, such as the Reform Party), Grenier said Canadian Future benefits from having a sitting legislator in Cardy. That advantage should hold for at least a few more months, until New Brunswick holds its provincial election.
But like Kurl, Grenier questions how much traction the party will have without a high-profile federal name at the helm. The People's Party of Canada, Grenier said, benefited in its early days from the popularity of its leader Maxime Bernier, who recently had come close to winning the Conservative Party leadership.
And in 2014, MP Jean-François Fortin left the Bloc Québecois to form Forces et Démocratie, a party which ran 17 candidates in the 2015 election. Fortin himself earned 11 per cent of the vote in the riding where he was the incumbent. The party's other candidates did poorly; apart from Fortin, the candidate who performed best barely managed two per cent of the vote.
The People's Party and Forces et Démocratie have never won a seat in the House of Commons.
"It is rare for a party to go from nothing to having seats. It usually takes a couple cycles, if it ever happens," Grenier said.
"If you're looking at all the parties that are across the country, provincially and federally, that have seats, virtually all of them are either the national brands — Liberal, Conservative, NDP — or they formed out of some merger or some sort of arrangement of the parties, like the Saskatchewan Party or the United Conservatives.
"It's not common that you have a little party that just makes an impact here. So the precedent isn't very good."
The Canadian Future Party does have some federal experience behind it.
Former NDP MP Denis Blanchette is on the party's national council. The party told CBC News it also has the support of Peter Kent, the environment minister under Stephen Harper, and former Manitoba MP David Bjornson.
Still, given the party's slim current prospects of earning a seat in the House of Commons, some who were once associated with the party's advocacy organization — Centre Ice Canadians — question whether the movement's goal of offering Canadians more centrist candidates could be better served elsewhere.
Initially called Centre Ice Conservatives, the group was formed in 2022 as a home for voters concerned about the direction of the Conservative Party of Canada.
Former B.C. premier Christy Clark was involved briefly with Centre Ice Canadians in its infancy, having been a keynote speaker at the group's debut conference in 2022.
Last year, she told the Globe and Mail the group would be better advised to position centrist candidates in existing parties to achieve its goals.
A year later, Clark still holds that view.
"The impact they're going to have as a political party is they're just going to take away votes from one party or another. The energy would be best directed ensuring both of the major parties have moderate, thoughtful candidates," Clark told CBC News.
"People don't really want a new political party. People want the political parties that we have to be different from what they appear to be. They want them to be focused on sensible issues — bigger paycheques, more jobs, [a] better standard of living — and [to] pay attention to health care and the environment."
And while Cardy said he hopes sitting MPs will join their cause, he told reporters Wednesday the key goal is to inject "ideas" into the federal arena.
"We hope people who are attracted by the values we're putting on the table right now, regardless of their history, will give us a look," he said.
"If they just take our ideas and not our party card, I'm fine with that too."
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