In October 2012, the Alberta Liberal Party was a dying brand, ignored by 90 per cent of voters, whittled down to just five seats in the legislature and shackled to a toxic-in-Alberta federal party. Desperate party officials came up with an idea to re-energize the party brand: change the name to Liberalberta.
“At least people are talking about us,” said one official at the time. “Some might think it’s silly, but I think it’s creative.”
Well, it certainly got people talking about how creatively silly it was—right up until the party re-adopted its old name in 2014. The re-rebranded but still unpopular Alberta Liberal Party then dwindled to one seat in the 2015 election. The name-changing flip-flop did not bring about the Liberal Party’s demise but was a public indication that the party was frantically trying to pull itself out of a death spiral.
But rebranding a political party can sometimes work, as it did for troubled Conservatives who formed the Saskatchewan Party (more on them in a moment).
Alberta’s New Democratic Party certainly doesn’t seem to be teetering on the brink of electoral irrelevance, but nevertheless the party has lately been pushed to change its name. Not shoved, mind you; more like gently nudged. A political organization called Alberta’s Progressive Future, founded in part by former NDP cabinet minister Brian Malkinson, issued a news release last November saying it’s time for the party to consider rebranding itself.
Malkinson argued that Alberta New Democrats need to demonstrate in the starkest possible way that they aren’t puppets of the federal NDP, even though the provincial NDP’s constitution declares the party to be a branch of the national party. Joining the Alberta NDP makes you a member of the federal NDP. This formal affiliation, Malkinson said, turned off enough voters to cost the NDP the 2023 provincial election. Or, put more simply, middle-of-the-road Albertans were turned off by the NDP name because of its affiliation with federal leader Jagmeet Singh, who has, among other things, argued against the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline.
Malkinson’s name-changing idea, though, received a lukewarm reception at best from party members. NDP leader Rachel Notley not only outright rejected a rebranding but argued in favour of keeping the joint membership.
Is there a lesson here or a cautionary tale for those arguing in favour of rebranding the Alberta NDP?
However, several candidates in the Alberta NDP’s leadership race to replace Notley have argued in favour of loosening ties with the federal party. In February, for example, Rakhi Pancholi said that when she joined the Alberta NDP in 2018 she was “surprised” to learn she would automatically become a member of the federal party. She went on to argue that “we limit our ability to grow our party” by “forcing” a federal membership on provincial members.
That argument makes sense if hundreds or perhaps thousands of Albertans had refused to join the NDP because they didn’t want to become federal party members. Perhaps more likely, just like Pancholi herself, most Albertans have no idea the two memberships are linked.
Besides, most people don’t even join parties. Most simply decide how they’ll vote during an election campaign. If they have been turned off by the NDP, maybe, again, it was more to do with the party simply sharing a name with an unpopular-in-Alberta federal party than with knowledge of the NDP’s constitution.
That’s not to say Malkinson’s idea for a name change would help. Political parties that have successfully rebranded have done more than simply change their name.
The Saskatchewan Party, for example, came about when four members of the soon-to-be defunct Progressive Conservatives in that province joined forces with four members of the almost-defunct Saskatchewan Liberal Party in 1997 to create a new political creature that went on to win government in 2007.
The formation of Alberta’s United Conservative Party in 2017, for that matter, came from the ashes of the old PCs and Wildrose. Even the federal New Democrats’ brand came not from a simple name change but from the amalgamation of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Canadian Labour Congress in 1961.
The British Columbia Liberal Party, on the other hand, did simply change its name to “BC United” in April 2023 in the hope of distancing itself from the federal Liberals while trying to signal it isn’t the same provincial Liberal Party that was rejected by voters in the 2020 election.
Will it make a difference? Closer to home, is there a lesson here or a cautionary tale for those arguing in favour of some form of rebranding—whether by name or constitutional amendment—of the Alberta NDP?
Perhaps the proof will be in the BC-election pudding on October 19.
Graham Thomson is a political analyst, member of the Legislature Press Gallery and former Edmonton Journal political columnist.
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