They would not come back to office until 1896; Wilfrid Laurier was prime minister from that year until the party's defeat in 1911 and his tenure was marked by several compromises between English and French Canada.

Lester B. Pearson expanded the welfare state during his tenure as prime minister from 1963 to 1968, while his successor, Pierre Trudeau, continued this expansion while promoting economic nationalism, social progressivism, and a more independent foreign policy during his governance from 1968 to 1979 and from 1980 to 1984.

[27] At the time of Confederation of the former British colonies of Canada (now Ontario and Quebec), New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, the radical Liberals were marginalized by the more pragmatic Conservative coalition assembled under Sir John A. Macdonald.

[29] Laurier led the Liberals to power in the 1896 election (in which he became the first Francophone Prime Minister) and oversaw a government that increased immigration to settle Western Canada.

However, the advisory committee became dominated by members of Parliament and all three bodies were underfunded and competed with both local and provincial Liberal associations and the national caucus for authority.

[33] Under Laurier, and his successor William Lyon Mackenzie King, the Liberals promoted Canadian sovereignty and greater independence within the British Commonwealth.

Mackenzie King recommended the appointment by Governor General Lord Byng of Vincent Massey as the first Canadian ambassador to Washington in 1926, marking the Liberal government's insistence on having direct relations with the United States, rather than having Britain act on Canada's behalf.

He also reluctantly introduced old age pensions when J. S. Woodsworth required it in exchange for his Co-operative Commonwealth Federation party's support of King's minority government.

Their attempt to pass legislation to build a natural gas pipeline from Alberta to central Canada was met with fierce disagreement in the House of Commons.

However, only months after becoming Liberal leader, Pearson led the party into the 1958 federal election that saw Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservatives win the largest majority government, by percentage of seats, in Canadian history.

While Pearson's leadership was considered poor and the Liberal Party never held a majority of the seats in parliament during his premiership, he left office in 1968 with an impressive legacy.

Others, such as John Turner, supported the failed Meech Lake and Charlottetown Constitutional Accords, which would have recognized Quebec as a "distinct society" and would have increased the powers of the provinces to the detriment of the federal government.

[27] A small group of young Liberal MPs, known as the Rat Pack, gained fame by criticizing the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney at every turn.

The 1988 election was notable for Turner's strong opposition to the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement negotiated by Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Five candidates contested the leadership of the party, with former Deputy Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who had served in every Liberal cabinet since 1965, and Paul Martin, MP and former CEO of Canada Steamship Lines, as the frontrunners.

[52] Chrétien's Liberals campaigned in the 1993 election on the promise of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and eliminating the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

While the Chrétien Liberals campaigned from the left, their time in power is most marked by the cuts made to many social programs, including health transfers, in order to balance the federal budget.

[61] In Chrétien's final weeks as prime minister, he introduced legislation to reduce the maximum allowable donation to a political party or candidate to $5,000.

Political observers suggested that the move allowed Chrétien to retire on a positive note while saddling Martin, his longstanding rival and successor, with the burden of having to fight an election under the strict new rules.

The political situation changed with the revelation of the sponsorship scandal, in which advertising agencies supporting the Liberal Party received grossly inflated commissions for their services.

Nonetheless, by criticizing the Conservatives' social policies, the Liberals were able to draw progressive votes from the NDP, which made the difference in several close races.

Nonetheless, Martin turned down the NDP's conditions for continued support, as well as rejecting an opposition proposal which would schedule a February 2006 election in return for passing several pieces of legislation.

The Liberals thus lost a confidence vote on November 28, and Martin advised Governor General Michaëlle Jean to dissolve Parliament and call an election for January 2006.

The Liberal campaign was dogged from start to finish by the sponsorship scandal, which was brought up by a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) criminal investigation into the leak of the income trust announcement.

At that time, their popular support was the lowest in the party's history, and weeks later Dion announced he would step down as Liberal leader once his successor was chosen.

When parliament resumed on January 28, 2009, the Ignatieff Liberals agreed to support the budget as long as it included regular accountability reports, which the Conservatives accepted.

[91] The Liberals had considerable momentum when the writ was dropped, and Ignatieff successfully squeezed NDP leader Jack Layton out of media attention by issuing challenges to Harper for one-on-one debates.

[103][104] In response, the Conservatives ran a series of ads attempting to "[paint] him as a silly dilettante unfit for public office" and the surge levelled off in the following year.

According to recent scholarship, there have been four party systems in Canada at the federal level since Confederation, each with its own distinctive pattern of social support, patronage relationships, leadership styles, and electoral strategies.

During the 2021 federal election, the Liberal Party of Canada introduced their platform, which included a "Gender and Diversity Impact Summary" for each chapter,[132] as well as six key categories.