BC United? No, it’s not a soccer team.
But it could be the new name of the BC Liberal Party now that word has leaked out it’s the frontrunner in the push to change the party’s name.
Prince George-Mackenzie MLA Mike Morris has kicked around a few political footballs in the 10 years he’s represented his constituents as a BC Liberal and he says its time for a name change that reflects a shift away from partisan politics.
“Kevin (Liberal leader Falcon) wants to get away from that – 98 per cent of the population don’t belong to any political party at all,” said Morris.
“It does unite BC, because we want people to recognize themselves, not in our partisanship, but in our policies, and I think they will be impressed with what they see as we roll some of these policies out towards an election.”
The name change was one of the key commitments made by Falcon when he took over the party leadership from Andrew Wilkinson in February. At the BC Liberal convention in June, party delegates voted two-thirds in favour of considering a new name. Over a three-month period, delegates submitted 2,000 suggestions for the new name.
“One of the discussions I had with Kevin early on was going in this direction and he’s been very supportive,” said Morris.
“I’m not anywhere near as partisan as most of my colleagues. To me, oftentimes the NDP will have good ideas and the Greens have good ideas but the NDP, the Greens, the BC Liberals and the Conservatives are fixated on ideology as well, that prevents them from doing things.”
Morris says another motivation to ditch the BC Liberal handle is to distance the party from the federal Liberals, who are especially unpopular in Morris’s jurisdiction. In the 2019 federal election, the Liberals won just 19.96 per cent of the vote in Cariboo- Prince George and captured 11.59 per cent of the vote in Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies.
“It’s been a real chore, every federal election I have people congratulating me; they don’t pay attention to what’s going on,” said Morris. “When we had a provincial election I was always pointing out to people that we are not the Trudeau Liberals.”
If the new name is approved, it will take effect after the next provincial election, in recognition of the fact the NDP has a majority government and has the power to set the date of the next provincial election. Each B.C. Liberal delegate will have the opportunity before the end of the year to vote to take on the BC United name or keep the party’s current name.
“It’s a major change and we don’t want to be taken advantage of politically,” said Morris. “If we say we’re going to come out with this name and two weeks later the NDP call a snap election and people will be confused. So we need a large majority of our membership to vote in favour of the name change, and we’ll get that over with by the end of the year.
“Once that is done and we do have the mandate of the membership to change the name, we’ll change it, but it won’t be effective until the day after the next election.”
The BC Liberals have locked up the legal right to use the existing party name for another 20 years to rule out any other political entity from taking it over in the near future. Once the new name is approved, the party will then have to agree upon branding, a logo and the party’s colour scheme, all of which have to be established before the new name shows up on a ballot.
