Liberal Party of Canada, centrist Canadianpolitical party, one of the major parties in the country since the establishment of the Dominion ofCanada in 1867. The Liberal Party has been the governing party at the federal level for most of the period since the late 1890s, bringing togetherpragmatic social policy reformers and advocates of free enterprise, the balance between them shifting as leaders andcontext changed. The Liberal Party traditionally has been described as a “brokerage” party, in recognition of its success in appealing to a range of interests divided by region, language,ethnicity, andsocial class.

History

The Liberal Party originated in the reformist opposition groups that emerged in the mid-19th century in what are now the provinces ofQuebecandOntario—“Rouges” (Reds) in the former andClear Grits in the latter. The looseness and instability of all party formations at the time were especially persistent on what came to be called the Liberal side.

Both before and after the 1867 creation of the Canadian federation, theConservatives under SirJohn A. Macdonald, Canada’s firstprime minister, were more successful than the Liberals in forging a durable coalition. In 1873Alexander Mackenzie did become the first Liberal prime minister, but his parliamentary group was undisciplined and lacked policycoherence. The party was swept from office in 1878, largely because of its support for unpopular free-trade policies. In 1887Wilfrid Laurier assumed the Liberal leadership and was able to unify the party around a centrist platform and bridge the linguistic and regional divisions that had previously fragmented the party. Laurier became the country’s first French Canadian prime minister in 1896 and held power until 1911.

William Lyon Mackenzie King became party leader in 1919 and two years later was elected prime minister, a position he retained for all but five years until his retirement in 1948. Under his leadership, the Liberals had some success in mediating French-English and regional differences, and, by fashioning pragmatic centrist policies that included some social reforms, the party was able to draw votes from a growing social democraticconstituency without diminishing its business support.

Louis Saint Laurent replaced Mackenzie King as party leader in 1948 and served as prime minister until the Liberals’ defeat in 1957 by theProgressive Conservative Party. Saint Laurent oversaw significant expansion of thewelfare state in his early years, but the party also retained pro-business policies and acomplacent attitude toward increasedeconomic integration with theUnited States. Led by Nobel Prize-winning diplomatLester Pearson, the Liberals narrowly regained power in 1963. They once again expandedsocial insurance programs, introducing acomprehensive national health-care system. Pearson’s government also sought to accommodate the growing nationalist movement in Quebec, allowing the province to opt out of some federal programs and extending the recognition of official bilingualism in federal government operations.

Pierre Trudeau, who had been an elected politician for only a few years, replaced Pearson as party leader in 1968 and was prime minister for all but a brief period in 1979–80 until his retirement from federal politics in 1984. Trudeau turned away from the party’s previous attempts toaccommodate Quebecers’ desire for special status in the federation in favour of policies reflecting a Canadian nationalist wariness of American domination. He also focused attention on the defense of individual rights, engineering in 1982 the inclusion of a Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Canadian constitution. Nevertheless, the party was swept from office in 1984 by the Progressive Conservatives, a defeat fueled by an overall shift to the right and the intensification of discontent in Quebec and western Canada with the Liberal government’s record.

QuebecerJean Chrétien returned the party to office in 1993. He presided over a pragmatic policy mix characteristic of the party’s history but one in which the balance between welfare and businessliberalism shifted in favour of reduced social spending and a diminished governmental role in the economy. Chrétien’s focus on cutting the federalgovernment’s budget deficit led to significant reductions in financial transfers to provincial governments for social services. His views on Canadian federation and Quebec’s place within it mirrored those of Trudeau. Aided by a fragmentation ofconservative forces at the federal level, Chrétien led the party to successive election victories in 1997 and 2000.

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In December 2003 Chrétien retired from office and was succeeded as prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party byPaul Martin, a former finance minister. Martin’s selection signaled a reinforcement of the focus on balancing the federal budget. In 2004 Martin called early federal elections as he sought a publicmandate for his leadership. Despite allegations of corruption against the party and the uniting of theCanadian Alliance andProgressive Conservative Party into theConservative Party of Canada, the Liberals maintained their hold on government. Nevertheless, the party lost nearly a quarter of its seats, and Martin oversaw a minority government. In the subsequent election of January 2006, however, the Liberals were swept from office and Martin stepped down as party leader.

Martin was replaced in December 2007 by Montreal-area MPStéphane Dion. Dion worked to revitalize the party, but his efforts gained little traction. The Liberals lost another 27 seats in theelection of October 2008 and registered their poorest showing ever in the popular vote. Dion resigned as party leader in December 2008 and was replaced on aninterim basis byMichael Ignatieff. Ignatieff, a prominent author and literary critic, had won a parliamentary seat representing suburban Toronto in 2006, and his rise within the party represented one of the few bright spots for Liberals since the fall of the Martin government. Ignatieff was confirmed as party leader in May 2009. He sought to move the party in a more fiscally conservative direction while still preserving the social programs that Liberals had traditionally supported. However, he was unable to reverse the party’s slide. In the2011 federal election, the Liberals placed third for the first time in the party’s history. Winning just 34 seats, it finished behind the Conservatives and theNew Democratic Party. Ignatieff subsequently stepped down as Liberal leader.

PartystalwartBob Rae served as interim leader until he was replaced in April 2013 by Pierre Trudeau’s eldest son,Justin Trudeau. The youthful,charismatic Trudeaufils brought the party back from the political margins by dramatically leading it to a surprising landslide victory in the2015 federal election, in which the Liberals garnered 184 seats, allowing them to establish a majority government with Trudeau as prime minister. Although his reputation was tarnished by anethics scandal, Trudeau led the Liberals to another victory in the2019 federal election; however, the party went from majority to minority rule. In 2021 Trudeau called a snap election, hoping to regain a parliamentary majority; however, the Liberals fell short of that goal, gaining just two seats but achieving another plurality to preserve minority rule.