However, the situation changed in 1885 when the federal Conservative government refused to commute the death sentence of Louis Riel, the leader of the French-speaking Métis people of western Canada.

[citation needed] Under Jean Lesage, the party won an historic election victory in 1960, ending sixteen years of rule by the national-conservative Union Nationale.

[12][13] Under the slogans C'est l'temps qu'ça change (it's time for change) in 1960 and maîtres chez nous (masters in our own house) in 1962, the Quebec government undertook several major initiatives, including: Under Lesage, the Liberals developed a Quebec nationalist wing.

[14][15] In October 1967, former cabinet minister René Lévesque proposed that the party endorse his plan for sovereignty-association.

First elected in 1970, Robert Bourassa instituted Bill 22 to introduce French as the official language in Quebec, and pushed Trudeau for constitutional concessions.

Bourassa was succeeded as Liberal leader by Claude Ryan, the former director of the respected Montréal newspaper, Le Devoir.

Ryan led the successful federalist campaign in the 1980 Quebec referendum on Québec sovereignty, but then lost the 1981 election.

Daniel Johnson Jr. succeeded Bourassa as Liberal leader and Premier of Québec in 1994, but soon lost the 1994 election to the Parti Québécois under Jacques Parizeau.

In response to a Supreme Court of Canada decision overruling a loophole-closing stopgap measure enacted by the Bernard Landry government, the Liberals enacted Loi 104 which provides for English-language, unsubsidized private school students to transfer into the subsidized English-language system, thus receiving the right to attend English schools in Québec for their siblings and all descendants, should the student demonstrate a bureaucratically-defined parcours authentique within the English system.

The Liberal party suffered a major setback in the 2007 election, which saw them reduced to a minority government, having lost francophone support to the surging ADQ.

Since its most recent election, the Liberal government has faced a number of scandals, including historic losses at the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the attribution of highly sought-after subsidized daycare spaces to Liberal Party donors, as well as allegations of systemic construction industry corruption which arose notably during the 2009 Montréal municipal election.

This move proved controversial, leading to a significant portion of Quebec post-secondary students striking against the measures.

After almost a decade in power, the Liberal government of Jean Charest was defeated in the 2012 provincial election by the Parti Québécois led by Pauline Marois.