New federal party stakes the middle ground

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/08/2024 (422 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Timing is everything.

But before we get to timing, let’s say a few words about the Canada Future Party.

They are the newest federal party in Canada, one that is — as of this morning — 10 whole days old. Which means, of course, that neither the party nor its policies are well known.

Their website spells out the turf they’re trying to claim — as a party that rejects partisan attacks, and focuses on policy.

“The CFP believes people from every corner of the country want to be united behind a common set of ideals: democracy, the rule of law, collective action, and individual rights. A country where you can live as you like, love who you want, and in exchange, you work hard, and we collectively agree on a common set of rules to let us live our different lives, together. Where decisions are based on evidence,” their newly posted website says. “Canadians are seeing an increasing polarization of the country’s politics, a landscape where manipulating algorithms to get more social media clicks is more important than good policy to address serious issues.”

All of which may be true, and still not garner the nascent party the votes it needs to make any kind of political clout.

But who knows? Stranger things have happened. There is a chance that a new party — if its reach is broad enough and its proposed politics are palatable enough — could reap the reward of arriving on the scene as the federal Liberals continue to demonstrate their apparent special skill at floundering.

It’s easy to understand the attraction that a politically centrist party could have for voters fed up with the three-buzzword-jingoism of the Poilievre Conservatives, the achingly painful and unctuous earnestness of the Trudeau-led Liberals, or the even further left of the NDP.

The Reform Party, after all, managed to capitalize on the combined alienation of the moribund federal Progressive Conservatives and the despised-in-the-West Liberals to at least find their way to Official Opposition status. And the balance of power in Canadian politics has long resided in a collection of swing voters who are neither longtime Conservative or Liberal voters — instead, voters who travel between the two parties, based on current circumstances.

A party that is fiscally conservative with a social conscience — what the CFP claims it wants to be — might be well attractive. (The federal Liberals used to hold some of that ground under Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien, but that’s a distant memory for most voters.)

But being a new party is a very big hill to climb, even more so because of the current first-past-the-post voting system, which clearly favours the larger existing federal parties. With a different voting system like proportional representation, a federal election might mean a new party would at least get to show its stuff on a national stage. Instead, it needs a coalescence of events — including luck and the misfortune of other parties — to garner even a handful of seats.

So don’t expect the CFP to be anything other than names on a ballot any time soon.

The CFP is running its first two candidates in a pair of federal byelections: federal public servant Zbig Strycharz in Elmwood-Transcona, and Mark Khoury in the Montreal district of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun. Both byelections are to be held on Sept. 16, which gives precious little time for the candidates to make themselves — and their party — known.

As for the longer term?

Well, it might one day be a measure of just how disgusted Canadians are with all of the other choices on the ballot. Or it might morph into a real option.

Time, as always, will tell.