Canadians will wake up on Monday to elect their next prime minister in a two-horse race between the incumbent, Mark Carney of the Liberal Party and Pierre Poilievre of the Conservative Party. 

Other candidates are Jagmeet Singh of the New Democrats (NDP) and Yves-François Blanchet of the Bloc Québécois.

Canada operates a parliamentary system of government with 343 seats in the House of Commons. Any party that polls the highest seats will have their leader become the prime minister.

Mr Carney needs at least 172 seats occupied by the Liberals to retain his prime minister position. 

Liberals began to lose favour with Canadians during the near-decade reign of Justin Trudeau, characterised by the housing crisis and slow economy, which gave the Conservative’s Poilievre a 25-point lead.

However, Mr Trudeau’s unprecedented resignation in January turned around the fate of the Liberals, especially since his handover to Mr Carney, a 60-year-old economist with an impressive resume of working as governor of the Bank of England and Bank of Canada.

Mr Poilievre’s 25-point lead dissipated as Mr Carney’s heavy credentials of studying at Harvard and Oxford assuaged the frayed nerves of Canadians threatened with a tariff blitz and annexation by U.S. President Donald Trump, who in February said he wanted to make Canada the 51st state of America.

While Mr Poilievre, 45, has focused his campaign on attacking Liberals for plunging the nation into a housing and cost-of-living crisis, Mr Carney appears poised as the messiah that will save Canada from Mr Trump’s trade war.

Mr Poilievre promised to make housing affordable and mount a winning fight against the trade of fentanyl and other drugs, a point Mr Trump used to levy tariffs on Canada and Mexico in the first few weeks of his second tenure.

Having led the UK through Brexit and Canada through a 2008 economic crisis, Mr Carney said he had experience navigating financial storms.

“I know how to manage crises,” Mr Carney said in February before he was appointed the head of the Liberal Party. “In a situation like this, you need experience in terms of crisis management, you need negotiating skills.”