Let A/Fq be an ordinary abelian surface. We explain how to use the Siegel modular polynomials, and if available the Hilbert modular polynomials to compute the canonical lift of A. As an application, if q = p n , we show how to use the canonical lift to count the number of points on A in quasi-quadratic time Õ(n 2), this is a direct extension of Satoh's original algorithm for elliptic curves. We give a detailed description with the necessary optimizations for an efficient implementation.