OTTAWA, Ont. — A new political party aiming to offer a centrist approach to federal politics will be unveiled on Wednesday, with Dominic Cardy as interim leader. Cardy is a former cabinet minister under New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs and a still-sitting independent MLA.

Cardy confirmed the announcement to Brunswick News on Tuesday night, and said he will take the party’s reins in the short term as it lays the initial groundwork in attempts to become a credible alternative to Pierre Poilievre’s populist politics and Justin Trudeau’s realignment of the Liberals further left.

The Centre Ice Canadians — originally the Centre Ice Conservatives — emerged mid-pandemic believing the federal Conservatives had drifted too far right, as Poilievre steamrolled over a more centrist-positioned Jean Charest to grab party leadership.

That movement to recapture the political middle will now be renamed and repositioned in the form of a political party. Cardy said that will be announced through a press release on Wednesday.

The Fredericton West-Hanwell MLA — joined by former Conservative leadership candidate Rick Peterson and a board of directors that includes former Conservative MP Peter Kent, former senator Marjory LeBreton, and former government comms director Chisholm Pothier — has spent the summer drafting a policy framework that pushes their pursuit ahead.

Those first few policy planks were laid out last month, along with a Sept. 20 deadline to decide whether the launch of a federal party should happen. “If the Centre Ice team decides to launch a new political party this fall, these are the ideas that we’ll share first,” Cardy wrote in revealing the policy document.

It borrows policy stances across the political spectrum. The document pitches electoral reform “with directly elected and proportionately elected at-large MPs representing provinces and territories.” It also pledges a strategy to ensure our national debt is controlled and then reduced. And it directly states that “climate change is real,” while stating that the country needs a transition plan that includes carbon capture, nuclear and renewable energy, but also “the use of democratically sourced fossil fuels, especially Canadian energy.”

The policy document then calls for “an incentive-driven program to reduce carbon emissions” where large emitters must pay. “But those costs should not be imposed directly on citizens,” it adds, a policy that appears to take aim at the federal carbon price at the gas pumps.

There’s a call to negotiate and conclude agreements with First Nations on self-government and resource sharing. It also pledges to increase Canada’s military spending to at least two per cent of GDP, a level agreed to by the country’s NATO partners.

The decision to launch a federal party is now the latest twist in Cardy’s political career. He was acclaimed party leader of the New Brunswick New Democrats in 2011 and led the party to a best-ever showing with 12.98 per cent of the popular vote in the 2014 provincial election.

But the party didn’t win a single seat. He resigned on election night, later reconsidered, though eventually resigned again in 2017, citing party infighting.

Just weeks later, then opposition Progressive Conservative leader Blaine Higgs turned heads by appointing Cardy as strategic issues director. Cardy was soon promoted to chief of staff and then eventually ran and won under the Progressive Conservative banner in Fredericton West-Hanwell in the 2018 provincial election.

He was then named education minister, keeping that job for nearly four years, before resigning with an epic public letter that held no punches in slamming Higgs’s leadership style. He was then expelled from caucus and remains a sitting independent MLA.

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