The 2025 Canadian federal election will take place on or before October 20, 2025, to elect members of the House of Commons to the 45th Canadian Parliament. The date of the vote is determined by the fixed-date provisions of the Canada Elections Act, which requires federal elections to be held on the third Monday in October in the fourth calendar year after the polling day of the previous election, though a current government bill proposes to postpone the date to October 27, 2025, to avoid conflicting with Diwali.[1] In addition to the statutory fixed election date provisions, Canada has a constitutional requirement specified in both section 50 of the Constitution Act, 1867 and section 4 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that elections for the House of Commons must be called no more than five years after the writs for the preceding election are returned.
The election may occur before the scheduled date if the governor general dissolves Parliament on the recommendation of the prime minister for a snap election, or if the House of Commons passes a motion of no confidence in the government. Early elections are more likely to occur during minority governments because the prime minister does not control a majority in the House of Commons.[2][3][4]
This will be the first election to use a new 343-seat electoral map based on the 2021 Canadian census. New electoral boundaries for each of the ten provinces were finalized between February 14 and July 8, 2023,[5][6][7] and officially proclaimed on September 22, 2023.[8] The previous 338-seat electoral map would have been used if the election had been called before April 23, 2024.[9][8][10]
Background
The 2021 Canadian federal election, held on September 20, 2021, saw only minor changes from the preceding 2019 election.[11] The incumbent Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, failed to win enough seats to gain a parliamentary majority or the popular vote, only remaining as the party with the most seats and retained its status as a minority government. The Conservatives won the popular vote and continued as the Official Opposition.[12][d] On September 27, Annamie Paul resigned as the Green Party leader, citing lack of party support.[13] Her resignation came into effect on November 10.[14]
Date of the election
The election is scheduled to take place on October 20, 2025, following under the fixed-date provisions of the Canada Elections Act, which requires federal elections to be held on the third Monday in October in the fourth calendar year after the polling day of the previous election.[15]
On March 20, 2024, the government introduced the Electoral Participation Act, which included an amendment to the Canada Elections Act that would change the fixed election date to October 27, 2025, to avoid conflicting with the Hindu festival of Diwali, as well as municipal elections in Alberta.[16][1] Moving the election date would also result in 80 members of Parliament first elected on October 21, 2019 meeting the requirement of 6 years of service to receive a parliamentary retirement pension.[17] The official opposition Conservatives argued that the pension eligibility was the real motivation for the change, an accusation which the government denied.[18] Of the 80 MPs who would become eligible for a pension if the election date is moved later: 32 are Conservatives, 22 are Liberals, 19 are Bloc Québécois, 6 are New Democrats, and 1 is independent.[19] The date change is unlikely to proceed with all opposition parties against the change; NDP MP Lisa Barron confirmed she will propose a committee amendment to leave the fixed election date as October 20, 2025 and minister of democratic institutions Dominic LeBlanc stated he will "happily respect the will of this committee" if it amends the bill.[18]
Political parties and standings
The table below lists parties represented in the House of Commons after the 2021 federal election and their current standings. Kevin Vuong, despite being elected as a Liberal, was disavowed by the party too late to alter his affiliation on the ballot, now currently sits as an independent.[20]
Canada's electoral system, sometimes referred to as a "first-past-the-post" system, is formally referred to as a single-member plurality system. The candidate with the most votes in a riding wins a seat in the House of Commons and represents that riding as its member of Parliament (MP). The governor general asks the leader of the party who is most likely to gain the confidence of a majority vote in the House of Commons to form a government; that leader becomes prime minister. The largest party by seat count that is not the government or part of a governing coalition becomes the Official Opposition. That party receives more finances and prestige than the other opposition parties.
An absolute majority of the votes cast in the last election is not needed to have power, and is rarely achieved. As well, the party in power does not need to have a majority of seats in the House of Commons – and under the current multi-party system, quite often does not have that. However to pass bills, the governing party must have support of a majority of MPs. Without majority support, the government falls and a new party is named government or an election has to be held. Four parties have achieved power at the federal level in Canada's history – the original Conservatives, the Liberals, the Progressive Conservatives and the modern Conservatives.
On October 15, 2021, the chief electoral officer announced that based on the formula in the Constitution Act, 1867 as then in force, the allocation would result in an increase to 342 seats.[23] This included a reduction of Quebec’s allocation from 78 to 77 seats. The government tabled legislation on March 24, 2022, to prevent Quebec (or any other province) from losing any seats relative to the number of seats it was apportioned in 2012 redistribution.[24][25] The Preserving Provincial Representation in the House of Commons Act amended rule 2 of subsection 51(1) of the Constitution Act, 1867, commonly known as the "Grandfather Clause".[26][27] The bill passed the House of Commons on June 15,[28] the Senate on June 21,[29] and received royal assent on June 23, 2022.[30] The chief electoral officer announced the new allocation of seats on July 8, 2022, which would result in an increase to 343 seats.[31]
Pursuant to the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act as amended, ten federal electoral boundary commissions were established, one for each province, on November 1, 2021.[32] The boundary-drawing process commenced upon the release of census data in February 2022. Quebec’s commission adjusted its work to be based on a 78-seat allocation in July 2022. The respective commissions completed their work and finalized new electoral boundary sets on a rolling basis, beginning with the Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island commissions on February 14, 2023,[5][6] and finishing with the Ontario commission on July 8, 2023.[7] The chief electoral officer then used the final reports of the electoral boundary commissions to formalize a representation order, which was proclaimed on September 22, 2023.[8]
The changes to federal electoral district boundaries took effect on April 23, 2024.[9][23][8] If the election had been called before then, it would have occurred under the previous electoral district boundaries, which had been in effect since the 2015 federal election.[33][34]
Allocation of seats in the House of Commons under the Preserving Provincial Representation in the House of Commons Act
The transposed results of the 2021 election, if they had taken place under the 2023 Representation Order.
This will be the first election contested under the new electoral districts established in the 2022 redistribution. Consequently, media outlets tend to report seat gains and losses as compared to notional results. These are the results if all votes cast in 2021 were unchanged, but regrouped by new electoral district boundaries, as published by Elections Canada.[35]
September 27 – Annamie Paul announced her intent to resign as leader of the Green Party.[79]
November 10 – Paul formally submitted her resignation, and ended her membership in the party.[14] The Green Party accepted her resignation a few days later.[80][81]
November 15 – Senator Denise Batters launched a petition to review the leadership of Erin O'Toole.[82] Party president Robert Batherson decided the petition was not in order.[82] The following day, Batters was removed from the conservative caucus.[83]
March 22 – The Liberal and New Democratic parties reached a confidence and supply agreement, with the NDP agreeing to support the Liberal government until June 2025 in exchange for specific policy commitments.[91]
December 9 – Trudeau's Liberal government survives a third motion of no confidence, with the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois voting for the motion, and the Liberals, NDP, and Greens opposed.[99]
December 16 – Chrystia Freeland, the incumbent Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, resigned from her position in Justin Trudeau's government prior to the release that day of the government's fall economic statement due to her opposition to Trudeau's fiscal policy;[100] later the same day she was replaced as Minister of Finance by Dominic LeBlanc, while the position of Deputy Prime Minister remained vacant.[21][101] Housing Minister Sean Fraser also resigned from cabinet the same morning, citing personal reasons.[102] The weeks leading up to Freeland's resignation saw another member of Trudeau's cabinet resign. On November 20, 2024, Alberta MP Randy Boissonnault resigned from the Cabinet following allegations that he ran a business seeking federal contracts and falsely claimed to be Indigenous.[103]
December 20 – Trudeau conducts a major cabinet reshuffle. The NDP officially commits to introducing a non-confidence motion against the government. Over 20 Liberal MPs publicly call for Trudeau to resign and over 50 sign a private letter asking him to resign.[104]
Evolution of voting intentions according to polls conducted during the pre-campaign period of the 45th Canadian federal election, graphed from the data in the table below. Trendlines are 30-poll local regressions, with polls weighted by proximity in time and a logarithmic function of sample size. 95% confidence ribbons represent uncertainty about the trendlines, not the likelihood that actual election results would fall within the intervals.
^Though parties registered with Elections Canada can field candidates in any riding they wish, the Bloc Québécois has never fielded candidates outside of Quebec (78 seats). Thus it is impossible for the party to gain a majority in Parliament.
^Includes Kevin Vuong, who appeared on the ballot as a Liberal but was disavowed by the party during the campaign. He has not been seated as a member of the Liberal caucus.
^While formal results show the Liberals winning or leading in 160 seats, those totals include Kevin Vuong, who was disavowed during the campaign by his party, and has since sat as an Independent in the House of Commons.
^"JOURNALS Thursday, June 23, 2022". ourcommons.ca. House of Commons of Canada. June 23, 2022. Retrieved June 24, 2022. A message was received informing the Commons that on June 23, at 10:28 p.m., Her Excellency the Governor General signified royal assent by written declaration to the following bills: Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867 (electoral representation) — Chapter No. 6;
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