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When it comes to its political rebranding, the party formerly known as the B.C. Liberals, now B.C. United, likely has an uphill climb on the North Shore.
According to a poll of North Shore News readers, only 13 per cent of locals like the new name of the party, while almost 30 per cent of North Shore survey respondents said they don’t like the name and would have preferred to stick with the ‘if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it’ B.C. Liberals.
A further 26 per cent of local readers said they had nothing against a name change but weren’t keen on the one chosen.
The process of changing the political party’s name started back in November, when it was announced that 80 per cent of the party members who voted were in favour of the change. (Fewer than 20 per cent of party members voted on the issue, however.)
Party leader Kevin Falcon had been keen on the name change, saying it reflects a more diverse political party.
Debate over name goes back decades
Debate about the name of B.C.’s centre-right “free enterprise” party has percolated for decades, mostly because of confusion about the B.C. Liberals’ perceived connection to the federal Liberal Party.
Some B.C. Liberals have traditionally been federal Liberals, while others have been federal Conservatives and others have not been associated with any federal parties.
Although the B.C. Liberals have been around since the turn of the last century, in more recent history, the party became the official Opposition in B.C. in the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Social Credit party, which occupied the right of B.C.’s political spectrum from the early 1970s.
The B.C. Liberals formed government for 16 years, starting in 2001. Given the previous success of the B.C. Liberal brand, some pundits have characterized the name change as politically risky.
So far, the jury is out on the choice of B.C. United as a name itself, with many likening the name to one more closely associated with a soccer team.
Another minor political scuffle erupted over the name more recently, after a press release from the B.C. NDP referred to the party as the “BCUP”, (which some read as B-cup, as in bra size.)
In response, Kelowna-Mission MLA Renee Merrifield posted on Twitter that “women’s bodies should not be the punchline of your partisan jokes. We’re BC United, not BCUP.”
“There is no ‘P,’ there is no ‘Party’ in our name,” Merrifield added.
North Shore News polled 8,780 North Shore News readers and asked the question: What do you think of the BC Liberal Party changing their name to BC United?
The poll ran from November 16, 2022 (when the party first voted on the name change) to April 26. Of the 8,780 votes, we can determine that 2,521 are from within the community. The full results are as follows:
Results are based on an online study of adult North Shore News readers that are located in North Vancouver and West Vancouver. The margin of error - which measures sample variability - is +/- 1.02 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
North Shore News uses a variety of techniques to capture data, detect and prevent fraudulent votes, detect and prevent robots, and filter out non-local and duplicate votes.
