‘The short end of the stick’: Canadian Future Party talks respect for Alberta, the economy and defence

Canadian Future Party Leader, Dominic Cardy, speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about his party’s platform.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length

Michael Higgins: It’s hard to escape the fact this is destined to be a two-party race, and there’s even concern over the potential fate of the NDP. What’s giving you the confidence to put the Canadian Future Party out there?

Dominic Cardy: The party was only founded last year. We had our first convention last November, and what’s giving us the impetus to go into this campaign is we want to make sure we introduce ourselves to Canadians, and in particular, we talk about what’s happening on the ground in Alberta.

We want to make it clear that there is an option for Albertans who believe in a strong and independent Canada, but who also recognize that Alberta has often had the short end of the stick and that we need to listen to Alberta as the heart of the Canadian economy and start to pay more respect to what Albertans are saying they want.

That doesn’t mean that we start talking about annexation if election results don’t go the way they want. What we need to be doing over the next four years is make sure that whatever party is elected in a couple of weeks from now, that they are held to account in terms of how they actually deliver on their promises to improve our democracy.

My party has got an incredibly detailed platform around defense issues, because nothing else matters if we can’t hang on to our country, and we can’t hang on to our country if we don’t have Alberta at the centre of Canada.

So how we deal with those internal divisions, whether it’s knocking down interprovincial trade barriers, whether it’s dealing with making sure that Alberta can get its energy to tide water, getting rid of logistical and legal barriers to development that we need to protect our democracy and to help protect our allies at a time when democracy is under threat around the world.

If we’re not going to be able to have a united front on those files, we’re going to be easy pickings for any of the dictators who, unfortunately, are now increasingly surrounding us. So, my party’s message: We’ve got to be tough on defense. We’ve got to have evidence-based policies. None of this foolishness of imported American culture wars.

The Liberals and Conservatives have both gotten into far too much evidence-based politics. We like to say, “We want to go not left, not right, but forward.” And that means using evidence. If we’re going to use evidence, that means a greater role for Alberta, and that’s why I’m looking forward to visiting Alberta again next week to support the candidates that we’ve got running, and to continue to take that message about having this as a united, strong country, using our strength, using our resources. I’m going to do what I can to keep that message loud and clear in Ottawa over the next four years.

MH: Albertans might be interested to know, of your 19 candidates, six are seeking seats here in this province, nearly a third of the party’s total roster. What do you chalk up that Alberta connection to?

DC: I think that Albertans have had sad recent experience of government that’s gone a little bit too far left, and government that’s gone a little bit too far right, where decisions have been made on ideological grounds that get the activists in certain political parties all wound up but don’t necessarily help in delivering democracy for Albertans, for Canadians.

I think that that’s why we were seeing that strength in Alberta, and I was thrilled to see that we’ve got that number of candidates running there, because I get the message around Western alienation, it is real.

I think people out west have been ignored for too long, and I think that we have got to have a national plan around how we deal with our country’s crises. And Alberta has to be part of that, rather than feeling that whenever a national plan is talked about, it means that the folks in Ontario are going to tell us all what to do.

MH: You bring up that point of Western alienation, Preston Manning recently writing an op-ed in The Globe and Mail suggesting a vote for the Carney Liberals is a vote for Western secession, a vote for the breakup of Canada as we know it.

How do you address concerns linking the election with a possible national unity crisis?

DC: I think it’s really unfortunate that someone with the history and the record of public service that Mr. Manning has, that he would engage in that sort of rhetoric. We need to talk about keeping this country together so that we can make it stronger. You don’t do that by saying that people in other parts of the country need to vote a certain way.

We’ve got to make a pitch for why Canada works, and when you’ve got neither Mr. Poilievre nor Mr. Carney offering concrete plans on how we’re going to, for example, get our energy sector up and running again.

We want to build Canada as the northern democratic superpower. We can only be a superpower with Alberta. We can only develop a strong economy to help save democracies around the world with Albertan energy.

So when I hear Mr. Manning, when I hear Ms. Smith, making those comments — look, we have got to get beyond this divisive rhetoric that’s too often imported from other countries. That isn’t going to make Canada a stronger, better place, and (we need to) start talking about how we can fix the problems we have.

I think we cannot give up on this project where we are seeing what happens when countries around the world slide into having single people become the spokespeople for their political movements and the drifting towards extremism?

Let’s not play those games. Let’s talk about keeping Canada independent and what we need to do that. I think Albertans have got the same perspectives as the other folks I’m talking to across Canada. We need to re-arm rapidly. We’ve got to get our military fit for purpose. That means money to pay for it. That money is going to be something that Alberta is going to contribute to the same way Alberta always has, but it shouldn’t just be Albertans sending their cash to contribute to transfer payments.

It needs to be in letting Albertans liberate their economy to make that money that we can invest sensibly based on evidence, rather than left or right wing political projects that have got nothing much to do with making democracy.