Young Liberals of Canada

The Young Liberals of Canada (YLC) is the national youth wing of the Liberal Party of Canada. All members of the Liberal Party, who are aged 25 and under, are members of the Commission of the Young Liberals. The Young Liberals of Canada are the largest political youth organization in Canada. It has been estimated that the YLC has nearly 60,000–80,000 members at various periods, and has a presence in nearly all of Canada's 338 ridings. The current President of the YLC is Mira Ahmad.

In an attempt to attract young liberal supporters for his leadership bid, Pierre Trudeau campaigned on the promise of reserving specific number of delegate spots at national conventions to young liberals. Trudeau went on to win the party leadership, and YLC was allocated specific number of delegate spots in each riding association and in accredited campus liberal clubs.

YLC wielded unique influence in the party’s leadership selection as it controls the accreditation process of campus clubs. YLC clubs had been fierce battlegrounds during federal leadership races from the early 80s to 2006. The Paul Martin leadership campaign was particularly notorious for hostile take over of campus clubs leading up to the 1990 and 2003 conventions. YLC's influence in the leadership selection process was greatly diminished in 2009 when the federal party changed its constitution to elect its future leaders by a "weighted One Member, One Vote" voting method.

YLC has also sometimes been a source of embarrassments and scandals for the party.

In many policy areas, the Young Liberals have been more progressive than the party as a whole, taking a pro-same sex marriage position as early as 1994. The Long-Term Commitment to Africa Policy, the Commitment to the Kyoto Accord Policy, the Protection of Sex Trade Workers Policy, Canada Post-Secondary Education Transfer Policy, and the Same-Sex Marriage Rights Policy planks of the Liberal Party of Canada all originated as YLC policy. At the most recent Liberal convention, policies espoused by the YLC include a commitment to an activist foreign policy, focusing on conflict resolution and the promotion of peacekeeping, combating global poverty, the creation of an international convention regulating the global trade in small arms and light weapons and munitions, a commitment to the Kyoto Protocol and promotion of low emissions vehicles, the implementation of a refugee appeal board, the Legalization of Marijuana, the creation of a Ministry of Post-Secondary Education, the elimination of post-secondary tuition fees for second official language courses, promoting and protecting safe-injection sites, and the creation of a National Volunteer and Work Experience Program. The 2005 decision of the Paul Martin Liberal government to not enter into the American missile defence program was in part credited to opposition in the Young Liberals to the program.