Ex-UCP MLAs to join, rebrand Alberta Party instead of rebooting Progressive Conservatives from scratch

Two former United Conservative MLAs will join with the centrist Alberta Party and file to rename it the Progressive Conservatives, and they'll abandon 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 earlier in July for a petition drive to revive the PC party, two things happened to get them to change course, Guthrie told CBC News in an interview Wednesday.

First, the UCP sent a cease-and-desist letter to the two MLAs turfed from Premier Danielle Smith's caucus, warning them their claim to the PC name would violate the UCP's intellectual property rights.

Second, Alberta Party president Lindsay Amantea proposed that the Independent MLAs join her existing party's fold, and together they could file a name change to "Progressive Conservative" with Elections Alberta.

"We figured, well they have the infrastructure; we have the momentum and the people," said Guthrie, Smith's former infrastructure minister. "So we decided, this is something that could get us to official party [recognition] faster without getting caught up in these legal wranglings with the UCP that they like to play."

Following an agreement in principle between the two sides, allies to Guthrie and Sinclair have already joined the Alberta Party's board, and will soon occupy half its director positions.

Guthrie figures that with Elections Alberta's approval, the party's name change could be complete by September — months ahead of where they'd have been if the Independent MLAs were launching a party from scratch.

The UCP caucus turfed the two MLAs separately this spring. Guthrie was removed after demanding a public inquiry into health care contracting, while Sinclair got heaved for suggesting he'd vote against the provincial budget.

Smith had cried foul against her ousted caucus members' idea to take on the name of the PCs, the party that governed the province from 1971 to 2015 before merging with the Wildrose Party to form the UCP in 2017.

The premier's team has pointed to a provision in elections law added under ex-premier Jason Kenney that restricts a new party from adopting a name similar to that of a predecessor party to a merger. Elections Alberta has listed the old Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta moniker as a "reserved party name," but has said it would have to judge its validity once a new party application was in.

However, that same rule does not apply to a party that already exists but applies to change its name.

Dustin van Vugt, the UCP's executive director, confirmed his party sent the legal letter to Guthrie and Sinclair, because the "PC Alberta name, logo and goodwill were being used by people with no right to it," he said in an email.

"Their attempt to usurp the goodwill associated with our legacy party in order to confuse voters and avoid the hard work of building a political movement is particularly insulting to the thousands of former PC Party members and supporters who are now contributing members of the UCP."

With their new party, Guthrie and Sinclair were promising a moderate and anti-separatist alternative to Smith's UCP, but also an option for lapsed Tory voters who had supported the New Democrats in recent elections.

That's the ideological space the PCs used to occupy as well, between the Wildrose Party and more progressive groups. It's also the turf the Alberta Party has tried to carve out, but has only ever elected an MLA once (in 2015) and only attracted 0.7 per cent of the provincewide vote in the last election in 2023.

It's become a political refuge of sorts for former PCs. Past leader Stephen Mandel was a cabinet minister under former Tory premier Jim Prentice, while Amantea, the Alberta Party's current interim leader, was a Tory campaign organizer before the UCP merger.

"We are exploring opportunities and partnerships that would raise the level of political discourse, and refocus the conversation on improving the lives of all Albertans, not just insiders," Amantea said in a statement. "The coming weeks and months will be an exciting time."

In recent years, other small parties have legally been renamed: the Social Credit to the Pro-Life Alberta Political Association in 2017, and the Buffalo Party became the separatist Republican Party earlier this year.