New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to call snap elections on Sunday, sending voters to the polls on April 28, two government sources told AFP.
“The prime minister is expected on Sunday to announce elections for April 28,” one of the officials, who requested anonymity ahead of a formal announcement, said Thursday.
A second source, who also asked for anonymity, confirmed the expected timing of the vote.
The election is set to be dominated by US President Donald Trump, whose trade war and repeated questioning of Canada’s sovereignty have upended Canadian politics.
Carney’s Liberal party had been trailing badly to the opposition Conservatives, but recent surveys show a dead heat race, indicating some voters trust Carney to confront the US president.
This will be the first campaign for Carney, a 60-year-old former central banker who took over from former prime minister Justin Trudeau just last week, after winning the leadership of the ruling Liberal Party in a landslide party vote.
Carney has never held elected office.
But he has argued that his experience leading the Bank of Canada through the 2008-2009 financial crisis and as head of the Bank of England surrounding the Brexit vote make him the ideal candidate to lead during a time of economic turmoil.
Trump has imposed tariffs on a range of Canadian goods and threatened further levies, which economists warn could plunge Canada into a recession.
Carney has called Trump’s United States a country Canada can “no longer trust” and warned Canadians that relations with Washington may be permanently altered.
Conservatives had been seeing a rise in polling numbers over the past year and their leader Pierre Poilievre looked on track to be prime minister after nearly a decade of Liberal governance under Trudeau.
In calling the snap polls, Carney is seeking to take advantage of apparent polling momentum, which appears to show the Liberals erasing the Tories’ double digit lead.
Trump has also taken to mocking Poilievre, saying the Canadian Conservative is “stupidly no friend of mine.”
Poilievre has been under pressure to distance himself from Trump, a deeply unpopular figure across Canada, amid his repeated threats to make the country the 51st US state.
