Prime Minister Mark Carney will ask the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and call a federal election this Sunday, Radio-Canada has learned.

The election campaign will kick off barely a week after Carney was sworn in as prime minister and appointed his cabinet.

Carney's trip to Rideau Hall to speak to Gov. Gen. Mary Simon will come a day before MPs were scheduled to return after Parliament was prorogued on Jan. 6. 

An election campaign is expected to last between 36 and 50 days. Election day remains to be confirmed, but voters are expected to cast their ballots on either April 28 or May 5, according to sources that spoke with Radio-Canada.

Carney is making the call against a backdrop of public opinion polls that have placed the Liberal Party just out front in the coming contest. 

According to CBC's Poll Tracker, the Liberals led by Carney are leading with 37.7 per cent, compared to Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives who stand just below that at 37.4 per cent support. 

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While close in the popular vote, the Liberal voter base is spread more evenly across the country, which gives them a distinct advantage in the number of seats they could win over the Conservatives who have concentrated support in Alberta and Saskatchewan. 

The CBC Poll Tracker suggests that if a vote were to take place now, the Liberals could secure 176 seats to the Conservatives 133.

With a federal election call likely in a matter of days, no political party has nominated candidates to all 343 ridings, with Prime Minister Mark Carney's Liberals behind all the other national parties.

The Conservatives lead the pack, with 258 out of 343 ridings filled as of last week. 

The NDP is in second place, with 217 candidates ready as of Tuesday.

In third place, the Green Party has nominated 208 candidates.

The Liberal Party is at 185.

 

When Canada could have an election

 

CBC News chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault and Power & Politics host David Cochrane discuss the potential timing of a Canadian election, which would likely be April 28 or May 5.

The Bloc Québécois, which only runs candidates in Quebec, has names for 53 of the province's 78 ridings. Though only 11 were officially nominated as of Tuesday, the party points out 29 of its current 33 MPs have announced they plan to run again, and some 16 other people have been announced as candidates.

"It's important to remember that the Liberals just went through a leadership campaign and many MPs, before the Liberal leadership contest and before the resignation of Mr. Trudeau, were clearly dissatisfied with their leader and some threatened to walk out the door," said Cristine De Clercy, a political science professor at Trent University.

De Clercy pointed out Carney's new leadership, along with the rising fortunes for Liberals in the polls, may change the calculus for some potential candidates.

"It's difficult to recruit candidates when you're not sure if the incumbent is leaving or not," she said. 

But as it looked like Carney would win the leadership race, some incumbents who had previously announced they were not running changed course, such as Industry Minister Anita Anand and Saint John-Rothesay MP Wayne Long. 

Still, Melanee Thomas, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary, said the number of Liberal nominees is unusually low this close to a campaign.

"It is just about half of the candidates that they need," she said. "That's got to get up there before they drop the writ."

Thomas, who ran for the NDP in 2004 and 2006 under Jack Layton, also said it is little surprise the Conservatives are ahead of everyone else. 

"They've been agitating for an election for months," she said. 

Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives have the most nominees in place ahead of a possible snap election this spring. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

De Clercy agreed, saying the Conservatives "clearly are on the ball." 

Thomas said parties which are preoccupied with meeting gender and diversity quotas to better represent Canadian demographics tend to have longer nomination periods. She pointed to the NDP's constitution having such obligations.

Little time for vetting before snap election

Both Thomas and De Clercy said one hazard for all parties is vetting candidates too quickly.

De Clercy said there's the risk that candidates have made online posts, potentially dating back to when they were teenagers, that could become a problem for the party if they were to resurface during the campaign.

Rushing to fill the vacant spots "leaves parties and candidates vulnerable to gaffes," Thomas agreed. 

Though Parliament is officially prorogued until March 24, Carney is an unelected prime minister, with no seat in the House.

Since his victory in the Liberal leadership race last week, many senior elected officials have said Canadians need a government with a strong mandate to lead the country amid the economic threats represented by U.S. President Donald Trump.

"The prime minister is committed to the electoral process," Anand told CBC's Power and Politics host David Cochrane on Monday.

"I know the prime minister would like to have a seat in the House of Commons, and we would very much like to see him sitting there with us as the prime minister of this country," she said. 

The opposition parties have threatened to vote down the Liberal government in a non-confidence motion if Parliament resumes before an election.

Transport Minister Anita Anand is set to reverse her decision to retire from politics and announce she will seek re-election, CBC News has learned.

Anand is expected to make the announcement on Friday at an event with Mark Carney, according to sources with knowledge of the plans who were not authorized to speak publicly. 

Carney, a former central banker in Canada and the U.K., is widely seen as the front-runner to succeed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Anand and her office did not respond to requests for comment. Carney's campaign also did not respond to a request for comment.

Anand, who had been seen as a possible Liberal leadership candidate, announced on Jan. 11 she would both not seek the party leadership and not run in the upcoming federal election.

She said in a statement posted to social media at the time that she has been "deeply honoured and humbled to serve as Oakville's member of Parliament and as member of cabinet."

But Liberal fortunes shifted dramatically in the weeks since that announcement. The return of U.S. President Donald Trump to the White House and Trudeau's announcement that he would step down as prime minister have jolted Liberal support in a string of public opinion polls.

The governing party now finds itself statistically tied with the Conservatives in some polls, after years of trailing by double digits and by more than 20 points in recent months.

Carney consistently polls better than his leadership rivals. He also has more cabinet and caucus endorsements than any other candidate and has raised more money from more donors.

Anand's decision would give the Liberals an incumbent in a key riding in a battleground region in Ontario. The Oakville MP has held several cabinet portfolios since she was elected in 2019. Anand was first minister of public services and procurement, then became the second woman ever to serve as minister of national defence.

Anand is not the first Liberal MP cabinet minister to change her mind about seeking re-election.

Housing Minister Nathaniel Erskine-Smith announced last year that he would not seek re-election, but he changed course when he was appointed to cabinet in January.

And New Brunswick MP Wayne Long, who had said he would not run again, has also said he would seek re-election if Carney wins the leadership. Long was among the first caucus members to publicly call for Trudeau's resignation.