Canada will host an election next week

Voters will consider a range of issues — the economy, housing, trade relations with the U.S. — as they choose their elected officials

Canada will host an election on Monday, with voters set to consider a range of issues — the economy, housing, trade relations with the U.S. — as they choose their elected officials, who in turn will decide on the next Prime Minister of the country.

Top 10 Canadian Prime Minister candidates on Poilievre, Carney and crypto

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The narrative: Despite the recent attention paid to the topic in the U.S., crypto is not a major electoral issue during this year's Canadian election. Neither leading Prime Minister candidate has campaigned on the topic, but here's how they've discussed the issue in the past.

Why it matters: Canada infamously saw massive crypto exchange collapses over the past few years, leading to concerted efforts from its provincial regulators to enact guardrails on the digital asset industry. While exchanges like Coinbase are calling for policies like a Canadian government task force or a bitcoin reserve, so far the leading candidates for Prime Minister seem to have other issues on their minds (namely: U.S. relations and trade, housing and the economy).

Breaking it down: When Canadians go to the polls on Monday, they'll be selecting their preferred candidate for Member of Parliament in their local riding (district). The party with a majority of seats will form the country's new government, and the leader of that party will become the new Prime Minister.

While the Conservative Party and its leader Pierre Poilievre held comfortable leads in polling averages through late-January 2025, the Liberal Party saw a massive surge in popularity after U.S. President Donald Trump announced tariffs with Canada (and most other countries). The Liberal Party, now with leader Mark Carney, has held a significant edge ever since, according to both polling data and Polymarket. Carney took over from former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party last month.

Pierre Poilievre

Poilievre is a longtime Bitcoin and blockchain advocate who has led the Conservative Party since September 2022. He owns shares in a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). In 2022, he promised to turn Canada into the "blockchain and crypto capital of the world" during a campaign speech (a phrase Trump later used on the 2024 campaign trail).

"I want to take control of money away from politicians and bankers, and give it back to the people," Poilievre said. "We need to give people the freedom to choose other money. If the government is going to abuse our cash, we should have the right to opt to use other, higher-quality cash."

He even bought shawarma using bitcoin during his campaign for Conservative Party leader, discussing digital assets in a 30-minute interview with the owner of the restaurant.

He supported Canada's trucker protest, which dubbed itself the "Freedom Convoy" in early 2022 to object to a vaccine mandate for any truckers crossing the U.S.-Canadian border. At the time, the Canadian government sought to freeze financial support for the protestors, including by sanctioning crypto wallets tied to the truckers.

While Poilievre does not appear to have specifically linked Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to the truckers who may have lost banking access, he did call bitcoin "the single most important asset you could own."

Poilievre has also opposed the Bank of Canada's research into a central bank digital currency, arguing that it could infringe on privacy rights or let lawmakers target benefits to supporters. Last year he supported a bill which would have banned a Canadian CBDC outright (echoing U.S. Republicans who have done the same here).

Canadian magazine Maclean's reported that while Poilievre has said less about crypto in recent days, the Conservative Party as a whole still tends to support the industry, citing various Members of Parliament who have introduced bills or otherwise discussed crypto.

Poilievre did seem to discuss crypto publicly less after FTX's dramatic collapse in 2022, which his political opponents used to issue warnings about Poilievre's prior advocacy for digital assets. Poilievre may also be reckoning with Trump's unpopularity in Canada, and seeking to distance himself from policies that may imitate the U.S. President's.

Mark Carney

Carney was the head of both the Bank of Canada and later the Bank of England. While he hasn't said a lot about Bitcoin, he did give a speech on the "future of money" in London in March 2018, where he criticized digital assets' use, citing speculative mania and a lack of vendors willing to accept it as a payment tool.

"The long, charitable answer is that cryptocurrencies act as money, at best, only for some people and to a limited extent, and even then only in parallel with the