With an election on the horizon, Poilievre's Conservatives sign up dozens of new candidates

The next federal election could be more than a year away but political parties are already deep into planning their next campaigns — and recruiting new candidates.

Well ahead in the polls and reporting record-breaking sums in political donations, the Conservatives are also leading the pack on nominating candidates new to federal politics.

To date, the Conservative Party of Canada has nominated about 40 new faces as candidates. The party currently has 118 members of Parliament.

Elections Canada records, coupled with publicly available information, show the Conservatives have been naming new candidates almost every week since the beginning of the year, especially in Ontario and British Columbia.

The newly-recruited Conservative candidates include:

• Chief Billy Morin, the youngest chief in Enoch Cree Nation's modern history. He's running in Edmonton Northwest, a new riding created in the most recent electoral boundary shuffle. The poll aggregator website Canada338 says the riding is likely to go blue.

• Karen Stintz, a former longtime Toronto city councillor; she's nominated in the Toronto riding of Eglinton-Lawrence. She was also the chair of the Toronto Transit Commission. The riding currently is held by Liberal MP and former cabinet minister Marco Mendicino.

• Eric Lefebvre, the former Quebec government whip, who is running in the central Quebec riding of Richmond-Arthabaska. The seat currently is held by Alain Rayes, who left the Conservative caucus shortly after Pierre Poilievre was elected party leader.

• Jessy Sahota, a decorated law enforcement officer, athlete and coach. He's running in the B.C. riding of Delta. Sahota has shared his story of being expelled from school at age 12 and his later career in law enforcement,