At some point this year, Canada will hold federal elections that will have major implications for its ongoing trade conflict with the US. These implications are so big that the elections have caught the attention of people outside of Canada, especially Americans, like never before.
Amid growing political headwinds, Justin Trudeau in January announced that he would soon be stepping down as Canadian prime minister and leader of the country’s left-leaning Liberal Party. At the time, it was widely assumed that dissatisfaction with Trudeau would allow the country’s right-leaning Conservative Party to sweep into power.
Since then, however, Trudeau’s adamant opposition to President Donald Trump’s planned tariffs against Canada and his repeated assertions that the country should agree to become the 51st state have done a lot to rebuild voter support for the Liberals. That has recast the impending elections as a proper fight, as opposed to a blowout. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has also expressed opposition to Trump’s policies, despite his party’s alignment with American conservatives on a host of other issues.
All this has put the parties on a high-stakes electoral collision that will play out… eventually. To find out when the Canadian elections will take place and everything else you should know about them, keep reading. For more, find out how a government shutdown in the US might affect your taxes.
Who are the candidates in the Canadian elections?
This year’s Canadian federal elections will see members of Parliament elected to the country’s House of Commons. The map going into the election is made up of 343 districts, meaning that a party will need to win 172 seats to achieve a majority. Heading into it, neither of Canada’s two biggest parties, the Liberals (153 seats) and Conservatives (120 seats), holds a majority.
As happens in a parliamentary system, the Canadian prime minister is traditionally the leader of the party with the most MPs in the House of Commons, so a majority of seats is not a necessity. On March 14, the 44th Canadian Parliament dissolved and Trudeau officially stepped aside after nearly 10 years as prime minister.
On March 9, economist and former Trudeau advisor Mark Carney was overwhelmingly elected as the new leader of the Liberal Party and sworn in as prime minister on March 14. If the party retains the most seats in the federal elections, he will continue on in the position. Otherwise, Conservative leader Poilievre will become prime minister, should his party win enough seats. Polls currently show Poilievre’s party ahead of Carney’s by a sliver, with the gap having been narrowed hugely since the tariff conflict kicked off with Trump.
Several other parties with a smattering of seats in the House of Commons are also in play, but none of them have a real shot of gaining enough seats to elect the prime minister.
When are the next Canadian elections?
Under Canadian electoral law, it is required that the country hold the next federal elections no later than Oct. 20, 2025. However, the law also provides that the elections can be called earlier by order of the prime minister, so that’s more like a deadline, not a firm date.
Liberal Party sources speaking to Reuters indicated that Carney is expected to call an election “soon,” but until that happens, we don’t know precisely when it will be, aside from the October deadline, but it’s looking highly unlikely that it will take that long.
How often does Canada hold federal elections?
At first glance, the timelines for Canadian elections might look a little familiar to those in the US, but there are some key differences. The country’s electoral laws hold that these elections must be held no later than four years after the previous round, but within that timeframe, a prime minister can call elections at any time if it is deemed necessary. You’ll often hear this called a “snap election.” If one of these isn’t called, the elections must be held on the third Monday of October in the fourth year since the last ones.
Unlike American elections where presidential races have a set calendar (i.e., 2024, 2028, 2032, etc.), Canadian federal elections can shift based on when snap elections are called. So, while the next deadline after this year’s election would be October 2029, if a prime minister called a snap election in, say, 2026, the deadline for the next one would be in 2030, and so on and so forth.
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