The upstart Canadian Future Party launches into byelections does it have a shot?

As theCanadian Future Party officially introduced its candidate for the LaSalle-mard-Verdun byelection on Thursday a day after the party'sformal launch questions lingered about voters'appetite for a new optionon the ballot.

Mark Khoury will run for thepartyin the Montreal riding,whileZbig Strycharzywas added to the ballotThursday fortheElmwood-Transconabyelection.

Neither of the candidates' biographies on the Canadian Future Party website mention them having run in any previous election or having any priorpolitical affiliations.

And while interim party leader Dominic Cardy told reporters at the launch in Ottawa on Wednesday that "the polls" show Canadians want an alternative to the Liberals and Conservatives, some of Canada's pollsters tell CBC News it's too early to tell if there's a real desire for a new party.

"I'm not sure if we can really see that there's a lot of appetite for another party. Maybe for different leaders," said ric Grenier, a poll aggregator with The Writ.

"You could say that there's the space for it, but I don't think there's a slam-dunk case that people are desperate for a new party somewhere in the centre."

In May, the Angus Reid Institute released a studythat saidthe leaders of Canada's main three political parties today are lesspopular than any of their predecessors overthe past 50 years.

"It does speak to an enthusiasm gap, or a likeability gap, that may reflect the fact that some Canadians may be feeling politically orphaned," said institute presidentShachi Kurl.

"But measuring the true size of that universe, and then understanding the extent to which those voters however many of them there are are wiling to get behind a political party led by a relative unknown, not a national household name, I think it's a very long road."

WATCH: Canadian Future Party pitches itself as an alternative to Conservatives, Liberals

Canadian Future Party launches as an alternative to the Liberals and Conservatives

18 days ago

Duration 9:34

The Canadian Future Party interim leader Dominic Cardy is pitching the party as liberal on social questions and responsible when it comes to fiscal issues. Cardy tells Power & Politics the party is offering another option to Canadians looking for an alternative to Trudeaus Liberals who are also really concerned about Poilievres drift towards populist extremism.

'The precedent isn't very good'

When asked to compare the Canadian Future Party toprevious efforts to create new federal parties (not including new parties born ofsplits in older parties, such asthe Reform Party),Grenier said Canadian Future benefits from having a sitting legislator in Cardy. That advantage should hold for atleasta few more months, untilNew Brunswick holds its provincial election.

But like Kurl, Grenier questions how much traction the party will have without a high-profile federal name at the helm. The People's Party of Canada, Grenier said, benefited in its early days from the popularity of its leader Maxime Bernier, who recently had come close to winningthe Conservative Party leadership.

And in 2014, MP Jean-Franois Fortin left the Bloc Qubecoisto formForces et Dmocratie,a party which ran 17 candidates in the 2015 election.Fortinhimself earned 11 per cent of the vote in the riding where he was the incumbent. The party's other candidates did poorly; apart from Fortin, the candidate who performed best barely managed two per cent of the vote.

The People's Party and Forces et Dmocratie have never won a seat in the House of Commons.

"It is rare for a party to go from nothingto having seats. It usually takes a couple cycles, if it ever happens," Grenier said.

"If you're looking at all the parties that are across the country, provincially and federally,that have seats,virtually all of them are either the national brands Liberal, Conservative, NDP or they formed out of some merger or some sort of arrangement of the parties, like the Saskatchewan Party or the United Conservatives.

"It's not common that you have a little party that just makes an impact here. So the precedent isn't very good."

The Canadian Future Party does have some federal experience behind it.

Former NDP MPDenis Blanchetteis on the party's national council. The party toldCBC News it also has the support of Peter Kent, theenvironment minister under Stephen Harper, andformer Manitoba MP David Bjornson.

Still, given the party'sslimcurrent prospects of earning a seat in the House of Commons, some who were once associated with the party's advocacy organization Centre Ice Canadians question whether the movement's goal of offering Canadiansmore centrist candidates could be better served elsewhere.

Initially called Centre Ice Conservatives, the group was formed in 2022as a home for voters concernedabout the direction of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Former B.C. premierChristy Clark wasinvolved briefly with Centre Ice Canadians in its infancy, having been a keynote speaker at the group's debut conference in 2022.

Last year, she told the Globe and Mail the group would be better advised toposition centrist candidates in existing parties to achieve itsgoals.

A yearlater, Clark still holds thatview.

"The impact they're going to have as a political party is they're just going to take away votes from one party or another. The energy would be best directed ensuring both of the major parties have moderate, thoughtfulcandidates," Clark told CBC News.

"People don't really want a new political party. People want the political parties that we have to be different from what they appear to be. They want them to be focused on sensible issues bigger paycheques, more jobs, [a] better standard of living and [to] pay attention to health care and the environment."

And while Cardysaidhe hopes sitting MPs will join their cause, he told reporters Wednesday the key goal is to inject "ideas" into the federal arena.

"We hope people who are attracted by the values we're putting on the table right now, regardless of their history, will give us a look," he said.

"If they just take ourideas and not our party card, I'm fine with that too."