29 Facts About Dominic Cardy

Since September 2023, Dominic Cardy has been the leader of the Canadian Future Party, a newly-formed moderate centrist federal political party.

Dominic Cardy attended Dalhousie University and graduated with a political science degree.

Dominic Cardy worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs in 2000 on projects to increase public support for the banning of land mines and for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs between 2001 and 2008.

Dominic Cardy served as a senior staff member and then country director for NDI in Nepal, Bangladesh and Cambodia.

Dominic Cardy then worked as a party campaigner, political assistant to an NDP MP in Cape Breton, and managed several campaigns at the municipal and federal level.

In 2000, Dominic Cardy co-founded NDProgress, a pressure group within the NDP that advocated the modernisation of the party's governance structures and was sympathetic to the Third Way.

Dominic Cardy was campaign director for the NDP in the 2010 provincial election.

Dominic Cardy was acclaimed party leader on 2 March 2011 after the only other candidate for the position, Pierre Cyr, was disqualified from the party's 2011 leadership election.

At the 2012 New Brunswick New Democratic Party convention, Dominic Cardy received an 82 per cent vote of confidence in his leadership from the assembled delegates.

Dominic Cardy was the NDP's candidate in a 25 June 2012 provincial by-election in Rothesay, coming in third with 27 per cent of the vote.

Dominic Cardy himself lost to Brian Macdonald in Fredericton-Hanwell, and announced in his concession speech that he would resign as party leader effective at the party's next convention, which was postponed to January 2015.

Dominic Cardy faced pressure to rescind his resignation and run in the Saint John East by-election which was called following the surprise resignation of newly elected Liberal MLA Gary Keating on 14 October 2014.

Dominic Cardy placed third in the by-election with 21.88 per cent of the vote.

Dominic Cardy agreed to remain as leader after the party's executive rejected his resignation on 10 December 2014 and a letter was signed at the party's provincial council by supporters and former candidates urging him to stay on.

Dominic Cardy had been working as leader on a volunteer basis since assuming the position in 2011 and had no legislative salary as he was not a member of the provincial legislature.

Dominic Cardy had earlier refused to endorse federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair's leadership, saying he was troubled by positions taken by the federal party during the 2015 federal election, and skipped the April 2016 federal party convention along with the leadership review that occurred during the meeting.

Dominic Cardy resigned as party leader, as well as resigning his membership of both the federal and New Brunswick NDP, on 1 January 2017, complaining of party infighting which he attributed to "destructive forces" colluding with CUPE New Brunswick, the province's largest public-sector union against his leadership.

Dominic Cardy said it is "not my intention" to run for a legislative seat as a Progressive Conservative candidate but that a "great many" of his former colleagues in the NDP would be joining the Progressive Conservatives.

Dominic Cardy was elected in the 2018 provincial election as the PC candidate in Fredericton West-Hanwell.

Dominic Cardy had run unsuccessfully in 2014 in the same riding as a New Democrat.

Dominic Cardy was appointed as Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development on 9 November 2018.

Minister Dominic Cardy spearheaded a plan to remove the Confucius Institute from all New Brunswick schools.

Dominic Cardy resigned from his position as Minister of Education and Early Childhood Education on October 13,2022.

Dominic Cardy initially committed to staying on as a Progressive Conservative but was expelled from caucus a day after resigning as minister.

Dominic Cardy remained in the legislature as an independent MLA for the rest of his term, while announcing he would not be running as a candidate in the 2024 New Brunswick general election.

Dominic Cardy said in June 2024 that he would be voting for Susan Holt and the New Brunswick Liberal Party that fall in the 2024 New Brunswick general election.

On September 20,2023, Dominic Cardy announced that he was in the process of founding a new federal political party, named the Canadian Future Party to occupy the middle ground between the Justin Trudeau-led Liberal Party of Canada and the Pierre Poilievre-led Conservative Party of Canada.

In July 2024, Dominic Cardy was arrested in Toronto for disturbing the peace after engaging in a confrontation at a pro-Palestine protest.

Authorities stated that Dominic Cardy "behaved in a confrontational manner towards other protesters and did not follow police directions" to leave the area.