Has the rise of Carney's Liberals sunk this upstart centrist party?
Dominic Cardy, leader of the upstart Canadian Future Party, is under no illusions that he will be prime minister after Canadians cast their vote next month.
"This party just started and what we really want to do in this race is to raise the profile for the ideas we're putting out there," he told CBC News.
"We're hoping that we can keep on providing new ideas that the Liberals and the Tories and really anyone else can steal if they want to. For us, it's about democracy, not about parties."
The Future Party officially launched last summer, billing itself as a centrist option for voters who have become disillusioned with the Liberals and Conservatives.
But the party was formed while Justin Trudeau and his more progressive Liberal brand was tanking in the polls. The Liberals have seen a sharp resurgence under Mark Carney's more centrist approach.
CEO and founder of Abacus Data, David Coletto, said there didn't seem to be much support for a new centrist party even before Trudeau stepped down.
"There is a myth about this centrist voter that exists that is moderate on all sides. I don't know if that's true," he told CBC News.
"It's too simple to say that most voters are in the middle or in the centre. I don't necessarily agree. It depends on the issue."
The Future Party ran candidates in two byelections in September but garnered less than one per cent of the vote in both contests.
Coletto said Carney's shift to the centre does leave "a lot less space" for the Future Party. But he argued a larger problem facing any new party is the emergence of U.S. President Donald Trump as a central ballot question.
Pollster David Coletto said a problem for smaller parties is how to make a response to President Donald Trump a central part of their message. (Matt Rourke/The Associated Press)
"I think that the broader issue-set has made it hard for a brand-new party with an unknown leader to get any traction, because Trump and all the chaos that's come from that has created a demand for stability," Coletto said.
But Cardy, a former New Brunswick MLA and cabinet minister, said he's concerned that the Conservatives and Liberals thus far are lacking sufficient plans to address Trump, specifically when it comes to national defence.
"There's still a huge gap between what we need to talk about when it comes to defending our country and what the major parties are proposing," he said.
Cardy also said he isn't concerned about the Liberal shift to the centre and its increasing popularity.
Liberal Leader Mark Carney is seen as more centrist than his predecessor, Justin Trudeau. (Andrej Ivanov/AFP/Getty Images)
"We'd always said that the goal, our biggest goal, was to try and drag politics back to the centre," he said.
"We certainly haven't had the time to build [our party] into anything formidable yet."
He said his party's platform focuses on issues where he thinks the Liberals and Conservatives lack "credible positions." The platform has three pillars: boosting defence, democratic reform and making social services more efficient.
Still, he said it's "fantastic" that the Liberals are moving toward the centre.
No full slate of candidates
The party isn't expected to run a full slate of candidates, but Cardy is optimistic that they can run in up to 100 ridings.
"The election is earlier than we'd hoped," he said, noting that the party only started creating its riding associations in January.
"We'll have as many [candidates] as we can get. But again, we decided that yes, we're going to run a campaign that's limited because we're new and that's fine."
Cardy himself is running in Fredericton. Although he said he will focus on his local campaign, he intends to make a few trips to various communities across the country — even if he has to fly there himself.
"I've got my own little two-seat, fast, little airplane. So if I can get that tuned up in time, I'm going to go and fly that around the country a little bit to get to events," he said.
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