Nadine Yousif
Reporting from Liberal headquarters in Ottawa

Image source, BBC/Nadine Yousif

I’m at the official Liberal Party headquarters here in Ottawa, and it’s been quiet so far tonight.

The party has rented out a sports venue in a central area of the city to host what will be either a jubilant celebration or a sombre affair. It is in this room that Mark Carney is expected to make his address later in the evening.

How the night will unfold is still anyone’s guess. Votes are still being counted in Atlantic Canada, and polls have yet to close in Quebec and Ontario, where the bulk of the country’s seats are.

ers have yet to trickle in to this party. But the backstage area is full of journalists from around the world, waiting patiently to see what will happen next.

CBC's live election broadcast is being projected on the big screens to keep everyone in the loop, and there’s plenty of coffee and snacks to keep us up for as long as it takes.

Phil Leake
Data journalist, BBC

Image source, Getty Images

Like the UK, Canada has a "first-past-the-post" electoral system.

The candidate who gets the most votes in each electoral district, or riding, wins that seat and becomes an MP. The share of votes doesn't have to be a majority, it just has to be one more vote than the second-place candidate.

Under this system, a party can secure the most seats in the House of Commons without receiving the most votes across the whole country, which is exactly what happened in the last election.

In 2021, the Liberals finished as the largest party by winning 47% of seats, ahead of the Conservatives on 35%.

This was despite the Conservatives narrowly coming ahead in the popular vote, receiving 34% of all ballots cast in Canada, compared with the Liberals' 33%.

First-past-the-post can also mean that smaller parties struggle to convert votes into seats, particularly when their is spread evenly across the country.

For example, the New Democrats won 18% of Canada’s total votes four years ago, but only 7% of seats.

What about the smaller parties?published at 02:02 British Summer Time 29 April

02:02 BST 29 April

Jessica Murphy
BBC News, Toronto

Image source, Reuters

We've been talking a lot tonight about the Liberal and Conservatives parties, but Canada doesn't actually have a two-party system.

In the political ecosystem, smaller parties - the left-wing New Democrats (NDP), the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois, and the Green Party - all have a presence in the House of Commons.

Both the NDP and the Bloc have at some point in their history formed the Official Opposition.

That’s highly unlikely to happen in this election.

The smaller parties are struggling to gain traction as Canadians focus on the US and the country’s economic future.

The NDP, which had propped up the minority Liberals under Trudeau in the last parliament, are polling nationally at about 8.5% - significantly lower than the share of the popular vote they had in the last few elections and far from their high-water mark in 2011.

Suggestions from pre-election polling seems to suggest that the Bloc could run about 15 points behind the Liberals in Quebec, the only province where they run candidates. They won 32 seats in 2021. Last year, the party picked up a seat in Montreal in a special election - one they are now struggling to hold.

Image source, Reuters

Jagmeet Singh, 46, is leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP), a left-leaning party that traditionally focuses on worker and labour issues.

He made history in 2017 when he became the first ethnic minority and practising Sikh to lead a major political party in Canada. In 2019, the former criminal defence lawyer was elected as an MP in the western province of British Columbia.

The NDP helped the Trudeau Liberal government keep its hold on power beginning in 2021, providing needed votes in Parliament in exchange for on progressive legislation like dental benefits for lower-income families and a national pharmacare programme covering birth control and insulin.

But in late 2024, Singh tore up that "supply and confidence" agreement, after Trudeau's cabinet directed its industrial relations board to impose binding arbitration to end a work stoppage at Canada's two largest railways.

At the time, Singh had said that the Liberals "let people down" and didn't "deserve another chance from Canadians".

The Conservatives are projected to have gained the Long Range Mountains seat from the Liberals in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, according to Canadian public broadcaster CBC News.

The announcement in the first projected flip of the night.

The party's first projected win was in the riding of Central Newfoundland, according to CBC News.

The Liberals swept all 32 ridings across the four Atlantic Canada provinces in 2015, but the Conservatives won eight seats in 2021.

Canadians across the country shared with the BBC their experiences of voting in today's federal election.

One voter - without naming who she backed - said her choice was the best option to deal with Donald Trump: "We need a strong person so that we can stand strong".

Ali Abbas Ahmadi
Live reporter

Voters in Canada share what convinced them to vote for their preferred candidate with the BBC.

Adam Sandell, 52, is a British-Canadian doctor working at a hospital on a remote Indigenous reserve in British Columbia.

The NDP is offering more to Indigenous people, and that's a big reason why I'll be voting NDP.

Indigenous voices and needs are getting lost in this election. So I'm most concerned about what Canada's next government is going to do about, for example, the scandal that there are reserves in one of the richest countries in the world where people still don't have clean running water. I judge a country by how it treats its neediest.

Stacey Jyrkkanen, 56, from Kamloops, British Columbia, is so frustrated with the Liberal government that she is voting Conservative for the first time in her life.

I have been a lifelong federal Liberal Party voter and Liberal Party member. This year I voted Conservative, and I also got my Conservative hip.

The last 14 years of the Liberals hasn't done anything. There's been a lot of things that they did that have disaffected people.

You can hear from more Canadian voters here.

The first projection of the evening from Canada's public broadcaster CBC has gone to the Liberals.

Philip Earle is projected to hold his riding in Labrador.

Of course, there are still 342 seats left to tabulate, so stick with us.

Image source, Reuters

Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party, hails from Calgary, Alberta.

He was born to a 16-year-old mother before he was adopted by two school teachers who raised him in suburban Calgary.

The 45-year-old has been in politics for almost two decades and was first elected to the House of Commons at age 25. This made him the youngest MP at the time.

His big win came in 2022, when he secured a landslide victory in a race to become the leader of the Conservative party. The position was secured with 70.7% of the vote share. He has consistently advocated for a low-tax, small government in Canada.

He is known for his confrontational style of politics. In recent years, Poilievre has tirelessly attacked the Liberals and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, saying that their "disastrous" and "woke" policies have worsened the quality of life in Canada, while promising a return to "common sense politics" if his party were to form government.

Image source, Reuters

Mark Carney, 60, is the incumbent prime minister of Canada - but he has only been in the job for a month.

He replaced Justin Trudeau after the former prime minister resigned in January. Carney won more than 85% of Liberal Party ’ vote to assume the role.

For many in Canada and the UK, Carney will be a familiar face. He was previously the governor of both the Banks of Canada and England, serving at the former during the 2008 financial crash and the latter during Brexit.

He is the first prime minister from the north, hailing from Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. He attended Harvard University and then Oxford, where he studied economics.

Carney is hailed for his financial expertise. He has also taken a defiant stance against US President Donald Trump, vowing that Canada will never become the 51st US state.

But Carney is politically untested. He has never been elected to public office in Canada, and this general election will be his very first.

Additionally, his French skills are weak, which could be a liability among voters who feel strongly about preserving Canada's French-speaking heritage.

Here are the ridings in which the party leaders are standing for election.

Mark Carney (Liberal) - Nepean, Ontario

Pierre Poilievre(Conservative) - Carleton, Ontario

Jagmeet Singh (NDP) - Burnaby Central, British Columbia

Yves-François Blanchet(Bloc Québécois) - Beloeil-Chambly, Québec

Jonathan Pedneault (Green co-leader) - Outremont, Québec

Elizabeth May (Green co-leader) - Saanich-Gulf Islands, British Columbia

The website for Elections Canada, the federal body which isters elections and counts votes in the country, seems to be experiencing trouble, with some s unable to access the site.

It's unclear exactly what caused the website to go down.

The BBC has ed Elections Canada for information about the outage.

Ali Abbas Ahmadi
Live reporter

Image source, Kathy Kettler

Nunavut is Canada's largest federal district. The entire territory - all 1.8 million sq km (695,000 sq miles) and its 40,000 people - will be represented by one person in parliament.

"Nunavut is at least three times the size of . If it was its own country, it would be the 13th largest behind Greenland," Kathy Kettler, the campaign manager for local Liberal candidate Kilikvak Kabloona, told the BBC.

Located in the Arctic, where average temperatures in the capital city Iqaluit are below freezing for eight months of the year, it is so vast and inaccessible that the only way to travel between its 25 communities is by air.

"There are not very many people who understand the reality of the North," Kettler said, describing the challenges of running a campaign where so much is different from southern Canada.

In Nunavut, one of Canada's three northern territories, most of the population is Inuit.

"The national campaign is really focused on Arctic security and sovereignty, whereas our campaign here is focused on food security and people being able to survive," Kettler said.

Food can be prohibitively expensive and there are infrastructure challenges to accessing clean water for a number of Indigenous and northern communities.

Read the entire piece about the challenge of conducting an election in Nunavut.

After the first polls closed in Newfoundland and Labrador just over 30 minutes ago, the province's premier has told the BBC that he's never seen voters so energized.

Andrew Furey, a Liberal, says lines were long and people were voting with a common interest in mind: Canada's sovereignty.

"Who is best positioned to stand up to the president of the United States," he told the BBC's Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet.

Furey said his constituents came to the polls with concerns about the looming threat of Donald Trump's tariffs and his stated desires to turn Canada into the "51st state".

"People understand the significance" of this election, he said. "It's an existential election with respect to the future of our country."

Polls in the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and the rest of Labrador are next to close.

It's 20:30 local time there now, and voting places are now shuttered.

We may be getting the first early indications of the election result soon, so stay with us.

Alison Benjamin
Data scientist, BBC , reporting from Toronto

As we wait to see which MPs Canadians have chosen to form their next government, we'll be monitoring and analysing the votes that make up those results.

The BBC will take results data from Elections Canada, the independent agency which organises elections.

Canada is vast country, spanning six time zones. This means polls close at different times across the country, but once they do Elections Canada will start posting the initial results on its website.

There are 343 seats - or ridings - in the Canadian House of Commons, and we’ll be reporting on and visualising the results as they come in.

We're expecting the first results to come from Newfoundland and Labrador on the East Coast, where polls have just closed at 20:30 local time (00:00 BST), and the last results from British Columbia on the West Coast where the last polls will close three hours later.

The BBC will refer to results we get from Elections Canada as "leading" - meaning they are preliminary figures.

These results will include all seats where counting is under way, but they make no distinction between seats where a party is leading and where a party is projected to win.

Where the BBC reports on seat calls from other media outlets, we’ll use the term "projected" - and we will provide an attribution for the source of that information.

In the days following the election, Elections Canada will publish validated results to its website.

We'll be bringing you all the data as we get it, so stick with us.

Canada's carrot and stick approach to taking on Trumppublished at 00:01 British Summer Time 29 April

00:01 BST 29 April

Jessica Murphy
BBC News, Toronto

Image source, Getty Images

Canada's approach to Donald Trump to their south been a mix of carrot (offers to negotiate a new trade deal) and stick (counter tariffs).

Canada has already imposed roughly C$65bn worth in response to current American levies.

The US has so far partially imposed 25% blanket tariffs on Canadian goods - with some exemption in place. Canada is also hit with global US tariffs on steel and aluminium and imported cars.

The Conservatives and the Liberals agree on maintaining some form of retaliatory tariffs. While the details differ, they agree many funds from those levies will go to helping affected industries.

Mark Carney says Liberals will shift to targeted tariffs designed to maximise pain on the US while limiting harm on Canada.

The parties are also looking to help the economy to handle any turbulence.

The Liberals and Conservatives are keen to seek trade partners outside the US - by far Canada’s largest trade partner.

The Conservatives want to pursue a trade agreement with the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, and the Liberals have said they will spend C$5bn on measures to diversify trade internationally, among other measures.

Image source, Getty Images

It is now 20:30 local time in Newfoundland and parts of Labrador, which means the first polls to open today are now closed.

The count begins immediately.

When the Canada's Parliament was dissolved last month after the election call, the Liberals had 152 seats and the Conservatives had 120. The rest of the seats were held by the Bloc Québécois (33) and the New Democrat Party (24), and the Green Party (2).

It will likely be a few hours before we get the full tally, but stick with us and we'll bring you the latest.

Neal Razzell
Reporting from Vancouver

The riding of Vancouver-Granville saw one of Canada's tightest races in the last federal election. The Liberals won the seat here by fewer than 500 votes.

This election is different, many voters coming out of a polling station told me.

"This is the first one I’ve cared about," said a man who’d just had a sauna and gave his name as Shane. "I see stuff happening in the States and it was the first time in my life when I saw politics infringing on my life."

But it’s not a one-issue election, at least with the voters I met. There was talk of crime, the economy and unlocking Canada’s natural resources.

Danielle Clarke brought her six-year-old to watch her vote. The main issue on her mind?

"Definitely affordable housing in Vancouver. It’s not a cheap city! Especially with two kids, wanting to keep them where I grew up."

Daniel Wainwright
BBC data journalist

The political map in Canada has been re-drawn ahead of this election, with the House of Commons increasing from 338 MPs to 343. And after Monday’s election, a party will need 172 seats for a majority instead of 170.

Boundary changes happen every 10 years to reflect changes in population.

Elections Canada, the agency that isters the election, re-calculated the 2021 poll, external as if it had been fought on the new boundaries.

The Liberal party won 160 seats at the last election. On new boundaries, it is estimated they would have won 157.

Since 2021, the Liberals lost three by-elections - two to the Conservatives and one to Bloc Québécois. That means they are defending a notional 154 seats and need 18 gains for the majority that eluded them in 2019 and 2021.

The Conservatives got 119 seats last time but, following the boundary changes and by-elections, they go into election night as though they are defending 128.