PRINCE GEORGE – 1903. The genesis of the BC Liberal Party. James Alexander Macdonald was the leader of the party and the Official Opposition Leader.
Flash forward 72 years and the BC Liberals have merged with the BC Social Credit under Bill Bennett.
In 1987, Gordon Wilson became the leader of the provincial Liberal Party when no one else was interested. Wilson severed formal links between the provincial Liberal party. And it has been the BC Liberal Party ever since. But soon that, too, will change under the 20th party leader Kevin Falcon.
“As you know, we had a great result in the question that we put to our members as to whether they supported a name change. 80% of our members have endorsed the idea of changing the name from the B.C. Liberal Party to B.C. United,” says Falcon.
The online vote began on Sunday and wrapped up yesterday at 10 p.m. with more than 8-thousand card-carrying members who cast a ballot. But there were thousands of original submissions.
“Well, you know, there was, you know, the B.C. Party and, you know, the B.C. Coalition Party. And, you know, there were a number of different ones. But, you know, a lot of the names had already been registered. A lot of the Web sites had been registered. So they weren’t available to us or they had been used by some other political organization in recent times,” says Mike Morris, MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie.
“So we had to find something, some name that we could use that Elections B.C. would allow us to use, but still captured the essence of what we are all about. Elections BC has approved the name change but the name change will require constitutional ratification as part of a delegated convention. That is expected to happen in the new year.
However, a snap provincial election, as some expect with the new premier David Eby, could amend that timeline.
“You know, it all depends on what David Eby plans to do if he does call a snap election,” says Morris. “You know, we’ll have to stick with the status quo for now. Just so we don’t provide, you know, confusion out there for the voters, but we’ll measure it as we go. And I’m sure we have a bunch of folks that are a little more focused on political strategy than I am that will tell us when the time is to pull the lever on this one.”
After that, the rebrand begins.
