Next Steps for Centre Ice Canadians

May 10th, 2023

By Rick Peterson

Last week Dominic Cardy, chair of our Advisory Council, sent out to our nearly 2,000 email subscribers, donors, volunteers and other supporters a summary of what we found in our national survey that asked Canadians about their appetite for centrist politics.

The response we received was loud and clear: the majority of you would like to see a new federal, centrist political party in Canada.

Taking on a task like that is a huge effort. It’s not something that we envisioned we’d be doing when we launched Centre Ice Canadians. And it’s not something that our small crew of volunteers could hope or want to do on their own.

On the other hand, that’s the direction that our supporters and donors have told us they’d like to see us take. As a result, our co-founders, directors and Advisory Council members have agreed that this is something that should be looked into.

So, over the next four months, a small working group led by Dominic Cardy and me will put into place a basic framework of what such a party could look like. We’ll draft a constitution and ask for input on a policy platform. We’ll come up with a name for this new Party - it would NOT be a Centre Ice Canadians party, nor are we able to register one with Elections Canada.

And we’ll ask you for your support with both time and money.

IF we’re able to do all of that, and IF we find there’s a realistic level of support, a final decision will be made by September 20th on whether or not such a Party should formally launch. If forming a new party makes no sense, we’ll continue to do what we can at Centre Ice Canadians in other ways to help “Change the way we do politics” in Canada.

If you’d like to help or support this idea, please send us an email. If you have an idea for a new party name, please let us know (it has to resonate in both English and French).

If you’d really like to help, please make a donation of $5, $50, $500 or any other amount that will help us pay for our survey, which cost us $30,000

Thank you for your ongoing interest and support.

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Rick Peterson is founder and chair of Peterson Capital of Edmonton, a capital markets advisory firm with offices across Canada and in Europe. He’s co-founder and director of Centre Ice Canadians.