Two former MLA of the United Conservator will join the Centrista Alberta Party and File to change the name of the progressive conservatives, and will leave the initial plans to launch a new party under the old brand that ruled Alberta for 44 years.
Since Peter Guthrie and Scott Sinclair announced plans in early July for a request to revive the PC party, two things happened that they made the course change, Guthrie told CBC News in an interview on Wednesday.
First, the UCP sent a letter of cessation and withdrawal to the two MLA reviewed from the Caucus of Prime Minister Danielle Smith, warning them that their claim to the name of the PC would violate the intellectual property rights of the UCP.
Second, Alberta’s president, Lindsay Lientea, proposed that the independent MLAs join the existing fold of the party, and together they could present a name change to “progressive conservative” with the Alberta elections.
“We think they have infrastructure; we have impulse and people,” said Guthrie, former Smith Infrastructure Minister. “Then we decided, this is something that could lead us to an official party [recognition] Faster without getting caught in these legal wranglings with the UCP they like to play. “
After an agreement in principle between the two parties, the allies to Guthrie and Sinclair have already joined the Board of the Alberta party, and will soon occupy half of their director positions.
Guthrie believes that with Alberta’s approval elections, the name change could be completed in September, months before they had been if the independent MLAs were throwing a party from scratch.
Smith had cried badly against the idea of the members of Caucus del Caucus to take the name of the PCs, the party that ruled the province from 1971 to 2015 before merging with the Wildrose party to form the UCP in 2017.
The Prime Minister has indicated a provision in the electoral law added under former Prime Minister Jason Kenney that restricts a new party to adopt a name similar to that of a predecessor part to a fusion. Alberta elections has listed the former progressive conservative association of Alberta nickname as a “name of the reserved part”, but he has said that he would have to judge his validity once a new request for the party was entered.
However, that same rule does not apply to a part that already exists, but applies to change its name.
Dustin Van Vugt, executive director of the UCP, confirmed that his party sent the legal letter to Guthrie and Sinclair, because the “name, logo and goodwill of PC Alberta were being used by people without the right to it,” he said in an email.
“His attempt to usurp the goodwill associated with our legacy to confuse voters and avoid the hard work of building a political movement is particularly insulting for the thousands of former members and supporters of the PC party who are now contributing members of the UCP.”
That is the ideological space that PCs also used, between the Wildrose party and the most progressive groups. It is also the lawn that Alberta’s party has tried to forge, but has only chosen a MLA once (in 2015) and only attracted 0.7 percent of the votes throughout the province in recent elections in 2023.
It has become a political refuge for former PC. Previous leader Stephen Mandel He was Minister of the Cabinet under former Tory Jim Prentice prime minister, while Lientea, the current interim leader of the Alberta Party, was a Tory campaign organizer before the Fusion of UCP.
“We are exploring opportunities and associations that would raise the level of political discourse and forward the conversation about the improvement of the life of all Albertanes, not only of privileged information,” said Lientea in a statement. “The next weeks and months will be an exciting moment.”
In recent years, other small parties have been legally renamed: social credit to the Alberta Pro-Life Political Association In 2017, and the buffalo party became the Separatist republican party Earlier this year.
