Planning for October: How the 3 big parties are preparing for an election

Ringing in 2019 also meant ushering in the start of an election year.

In October, Canadians will go to the polls to decide which party will govern the country.

Policies, strategies and messaging separate the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP. So how will that play out on the campaign trail?

Leading up to the election, The House will be checking in with senior officials and strategists from each of the three main parties.

We asked Suzanne Cowan, the president of the Liberal Party of Canada, Hamish Marshall, the Conservatives' national campaign chair, and Michael Balagus, a senior campaign strategist with the NDP, to walk us through how each of their parties will be approaching the lead-up to the campaign.

"I do think we have a record that we're running on," Cowan said, adding that creates both benefits and challenges.

Marshall agreed, saying the incumbent government's record is both a "blessing and a curse." The Conservatives will be vying to get back into power after Stephen Harper lost to Justin Trudeau in the 2015 federal election.

"We have to present a new and different vision for the country from the current government," he said.

The NDP have an initial challenge to overcome before their leader tries for the country's top job — he needs a seat in the House of Commons.

Jagmeet Singh is running in the British Columbia riding of Burnaby South, and Balagus says the timing could be perfect.

"The irony is that this is the point in the electoral cycle where you tend to take your leader out of the House and put him or her on the road a lot more," he said. Having Singh in the Commons does free up more options, but the leaders will all be circling the country anyway, he added.

But approaches to elections are also changing, and parties have been wrestling with how to use technology to target voters.

Currently, political parties aren't beholden to privacy rules. Given the sensitive nature of some of the personal data they collect, all three strategists said it's the parties' responsibility to ensure voters know how their information is collected and how it's used.