BC United wants to add former Liberal Party name to ballot

British Columbia’s opposition party BC United wants to put its old Liberal name on the ballot for the fall provincial election. Internal polls show that 30 percent of people were unaware the party had changed its name, a party executive said.

The party is preparing to file a formal application with Elections BC to obtain a statement recognizing that the party was formally known as BC Liberals and will appear on the BC United ballot for the Oct. 19 election, Adam Wilson, the party’s communications director, said in an interview Wednesday.

BC United changed its name in April 2023 during a membership vote. Leader Kevin Falcon had said a name change would boost party renewal and end longstanding concerns about Conservative supporters’ ties to the federal Liberals.

The former BC Liberal Party was not affiliated with the federal Liberals or Conservatives.

“We did a poll of British Columbians this past week and we found that 30 per cent of respondents didn’t know that the BC Liberal Party had become BC United,” Wilson said. “So that’s where the change is coming from.”

Wilson said he would not release all the polling data.

BC United, which has yet to formally apply to Elections BC to get the Liberal Party’s name on the ballot, now believes voters may need a reminder of the party’s recent past, he said.

“Almost a third of British Columbians still don’t know that the party that was called the BC Liberal Party, the party that built the Sea-to-Sky Highway, built the William R. Bennett Bridge, built the Port Mann Bridge, and that they changed their name to BC United,” Wilson said.

Elections BC said in a statement that it has not yet received a formal request from BC United to change her name on the ballot.

The statement said Elections BC, the independent, non-partisan office of the legislature responsible for administering election processes in British Columbia, will review formal applications to change the name of ballots based on the requirements of the Election Act.

The Electoral Act does not specifically prohibit a party from including its old name on the ballot paper, the statement said.

But Wesley MacInnis, communications officer at Elections BC, said in a statement that the office recently rejected an application from someone who wanted to register a party called BC Liberals.

“We informed them that this application would be denied because the Elections Act prohibits the registration of a party name that is likely to be confused with another party that is currently registered or has been registered at any time in the previous 10 years,” MacInnis said. “The BC United Party currently has the name BC Liberal Party registered as one of its other names.”

Surrey resident Vikram Bajwa, who in February 2022 filed an unsuccessful lawsuit in the British Columbia Supreme Court seeking to delay the announcement of the winner of the former BC Liberal Party election by 15 days over concerns about party audit results, said in an email that he had filed a request to register BC Liberals’ name with Elections BC but was denied.

Wilson said putting the former Liberal Party name on the ballot in the fall could help voters make their choice and boost current poll numbers, which show BC United trailing far behind the New Democrats and BC Conservatives.

Former Liberal Party minister Mary Polak said the party’s considerations to change its name reflect deep concerns about the upcoming election.

“It’s clear that they’re concerned about it,” she said. “Their final thought about asking Elections BC is, I guess, what we would call kind of a Prince move, right?”

Prince, the late world-famous musician, changed his name to a symbol in the 1990s during a dispute with his record company and became known as ‘the artist formerly known as Prince’.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 31, 2024.