Voters in the Liberal-held B.C. riding of Cloverdale-Langley City will cast their ballots today to elect a new member of parliament.
The byelection serves as yet another test for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government following the loss of two historically-held seats earlier this year.
Cloverdale-Langley City, located in the Fraser Valley to the east of Vancouver, has experienced a fluctuating political landscape in recent elections, alternating between the Liberal and Conservative parties.
The current contest will see Liberal party candidate Madison Fleischer go head-to-head with NDP candidate Vanessa Sharma, and Conservative candidate Tamara Jansen, who has previously held the seat.
Jansen defeated Liberal incumbent John Aldag in 2019, but Aldag made a comeback in the 2021 election, regaining his seat as MP by a margin of 1,654 votes.
The byelection was announced in November after Aldag resigned to run for the B.C. NDP in the October election -- a race in which he was defeated by the B.C. Conservatives by more than 20 percentage points.
Also on the ballot in today's vote are Green Party candidate Patrick McCutcheon, People's Party of Canada representative Ian Kennedy, and the Libertarian Party of Canada's Alexander Joehl.
The riding was previously held by former Justice Minister and Liberal MP David Lametti. He announced his decision to step away from politics at the beginning of the year after representing the riding since 2015.
The Liberals took a distant third in Winnipeg's Elmwood-Transcona byelection the same day. The riding was an NDP stronghold and more of a test for party leader Jagmeet Singh than for Trudeau.
The vote turned into a tight race between the NDP's Leila Dance, who garnered 48.1 percent of the vote to win the race over Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds who nabbed 44 percent.
The Liberals' consecutive byelection losses and poor polling numbers have prompted demands from both inside and outside Trudeau's caucus for him to resign as party leader.
Qualtrough, who serves as the representative for the Delta riding, announced in October she would not seek re-election.