'The Canadian Future Party': Independent New Brunswick MLA launches new federal party

The Canadian Press / Justin Tang

Independent New Brunswick MLA Dominic Cardy announced the launch of a new and supposedly centrist federal party during a press conference on Wednesday, called the Canadian Future Party.

The party, Cardy says, will look to attract disillusioned Liberal and Conservative voters. The party will position itself as being fiscally responsible and socially liberal.

Cardy criticized the current political landscape, saying that the left continues to increase spending on social programs with little to no result, while the right displays more fiscal restraint but often in a “mean-spirited” way.

"Canadians have been asked to play a political shell game," Cardy said on Wednesday.

“The Canadian Future Party is for all Canadians and I promise we are going to be courageous, we are going to be competent and we are going to be evidence-based,” Cardy said.

Cardy’s credibility as a centrist has come into question, however. While serving as minister of education, Cardy told a woman concerned about parental rights and Covid vaccination that children belonged to the provinces.

#NewBrunswick's Education Minister Dominic Cardy says THE PROVINCE OWNS YOUR CHILD - I SAY NO THEY DO NOT! Parental rights are at stake in #Canada. #cndpoli #PPC #MaximeBernier @RebelNewsOnline @jordanbpeterson @TuckerCarlson @PrisonPlanet @peoplespca https://t.co/pPUtPTEsWc pic.twitter.com/5h5HYtNULl

— Nicholas Pereira (@cdn_nicholas) August 28, 2021

Cardy also made remarks about declining tolerance for those who refused to receive the vaccine. When asked about frustration and anger towards the unvaccinated, Cardy responded that was “about where I am right now.”

Declining tolerance by the vaxxed for the unvaxxed is “about where I am right now”, remarked Education Minister Dominic Cardy during a press briefing on COVID-19.

FULL STORY: https://t.co/OwNTeofhID pic.twitter.com/l4aQuZqzx3

— Rebel News (@RebelNewsOnline) September 13, 2021

“All I can do is ask them, beg them to look at the science, to remember that things that they see on the Internet are not necessarily going to be the truth,” Cardy told reporters.

The party was recognized as being eligible on July 22, and was officially registered on August 8. Cardy said that the party will run candidates in the Winnipeg and Montreal by-elections coming this September.

Cardy, who formerly served as Progressive Conservative MLA and was even at one time the minister of education in New Brunswick, resigned in 2022 after making a letter publicly criticizing Premier Blaine Higgs.

The party’s website features an interim policy framework focused on personal freedoms, open government, and responsible spending.

"The Canadian Future Party proposes to move not left, not right, but forward," said Cardy.

"I was shocked the other week that Mr. Poilievre, the leader of a Conservative party, came out and said he refused to promise to increase defence spending to two per cent [of GDP]. He is riding on the coat-tails of the American MAGA movement and that sort of politics is not Canadian," said Cardy. "Equally, when the Liberals talk about how everything is just fine and sunny ways, they’re living in the 1990s. We have got to have a realistic 2024 approach to politics based on Canadian needs," he added.

In response to the party’s launch, Poilievre's director of media relations Sebastian Skamski told CTV News: "If Canadians want to get rid of the disastrous Trudeau government and its punishing carbon tax, which is propped up by Jagmeet Singh and Dominic Cardy’s NDP friends, voting for Pierre Poilievre's common sense Conservatives is the only option. We will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget, and stop the crime.”