Once I met here in Canada another immigrant, more exactly a refugee who escaped from the Islamist dictatorship in Iran, and he confessed that with his background he could never vote for anything else but a leftist party. I had similarly admitted to him that coming from the worst kind of leftist authoritarian national-communist(?) regime, I would never be able to vote on the left, that’s why my political preference is the right of the centre traditionalist position.

Ever since I became eligible to vote here in my new chosen country, I diligently showed up at the assigned voting centre to cast my ballot for the worthiest candidate. Yes, I voted for conservatives (I hate this nonsense distinction with capital and lower-case political trends…) in many elections. Sometimes, on more local levels I tried to lend my support to greener options: as a travelling man, I have seen from the Caribbean to the Sahara and from Alaska to Eastern Europe what pollution by humans can cause to this planet. Unfortunately, thanks to our outdated electoral system, those votes were in vain since the present “first-past-the-post” system (also called single-member plurality) doesn’t deal with the votes cast for anybody else but the winning candidate. It is unfair and stupid – like many other things inherited from the Empire.

Only my provincial electoral system in Ontario allows me to decline voting. This must be registered, and the ballots should be counted in a separate category – not together with the invalid votes! Had it been used by enough voters, it would send a message to the parties and candidates.

For a while, that’s what I was doing in provincial elections. However, the federal system is different, and I cannot decline my ballot, so I only can vote for a newcomer candidate who will lose. Because the present two-and-two-halves-party system will overpower any new small party or independent candidates. The two “half-parties” would be the NDP and the Bloc (Québécois), and for the past three decades, they were only extras in the dramedy happening in Ottawa.

I like the idea of a Green Party and green policies, but they never had more than 3 seats in the federal parliament (only two presently). It seems that Canadians think that our unimaginably vast land with places barely touched by humans warrants a laissez-faire attitude toward nature and the environment.

And this was the situation till this month (August 2024), when a new party has been registered with Elections Canada: Future Canada Avenir (Officially – Canadian Future Party; French: Parti avenir canadien). They claim to be in the centre and oppose the bitterly divided political trenches that crept in from south of the border (or maybe from everywhere else). When perusing their website,  a paragraph struck home:

 “More than two thirds of Canadians feel politically homeless. They’re worried about growing extremism on the left and right, worried our institutions are growing weaker, even as government gets bigger. The Canadian Future Party has a message for those Canadians: we may have been politically homeless but we are not helpless. Together, we can create a Canada with sensible, bold solutions to the problems our country faces – from health care to housing to the climate crisis.”

This means I am not alone in this country when I hesitate to cast my vote for any of the existing parties – seemingly they are not appealing to most of us… What if that “two thirds” of citizens eligible to vote is going to elect this new party? But of course, there is the question, as always: can we trust them to deliver that kind of policies and measures that would make Canada into a better place, to restore rational political discourse?

My idealist side wants to believe that. My skeptical rationalism is feeding my doubts. I even clicked on the Join button on their website, and I was tempted to become a member (for $10/year), lending the support they may need if I really hope this party could deliver the future of Canada. But when I left the Old World, I promised myself not to join any party ever. I wish I had hopes in a new political formation to restore the many things they promise in the interim policy framework; wouldn’t that be exactly what a kind-of-a-centrist “traditionalist” like myself would dream of? I am also aware they should target the younger generations who should be more involved in shaping our future. On the other hand, my boomer cohorts are usually the most active voters, so maybe I should start talking to my peers.

Is this the Future (https://thecanadianfutureparty.ca)?