The Ontario Liberal Party (OLP; , PLO) is a political party in the province of Ontario, Canada. The party has been led by interim leader John Fraser since August 2022. The party espouses the principles of liberalism, and generally sits at the centre to centre-left of the political spectrum, with their rival the Progressive Conservative Party positioned to the right and the New Democratic Party (who at times aligned itself with the Liberals during minority governments), positioned to their left. The party has strong informal ties to the Liberal Party of Canada, but the two parties are organizationally independent and have separate, though overlapping, memberships. The provincial and federal parties were organizationally the same party until Ontario members of the party voted to split in 1976. The Liberals lost official party status in the 2018 Ontario provincial election having fallen to only 7 seats, the worst defeat of a governing party in Ontario history. Prior to the 2018 election, the party had won every election since the beginning of the 21st century and had governed the province for the previous 15 years. In the 2022 provincial election, the Liberals saw a modest increase in support, finishing second in popular vote, but only winning 8 seats. History Origins The Liberal Party of Ontario is descended from the Reform Party of Robert Baldwin and William Lyon Mackenzie, who argued for responsible government in the 1830s and 1840s against the conservative patrician rule of the Family Compact. The modern Liberals were founded by George Brown, who sought to rebuild the Reform Party after its collapse in 1854. In 1857, Brown brought together the Reformers and the radical "Clear Grits" of southwestern Ontario to create a new party in Upper Canada with a platform of democratic reform and annexation of the north-west. The party adopted a position in favour of uniting Upper and Lower Canada into the United Province of Canada, a concept that eventually led to Canadian confederation. Confederation After 1867, Edward Blake became leader of the Ontario Liberal Party. The party sat in opposition to the Conservative government led by John Sandfield Macdonald. Blake's Liberals defeated the Tories in 1871, but Blake left Queen's Park for Ottawa the next year, leaving the provincial Liberals in the hands of Oliver Mowat. Mowat served as Premier of Ontario until 1896. While the Tories became a narrow, sectarian Protestant party with a base in the