MONTREAL—Jagmeet Singh is in the House. Finally.More than 16 months after he cruised to victory in the NDP leadership race, the 40-year-old politician from Ontario clinched his first federal seat in a British Columbia byelection Monday. Not only will Singh now be able to lead his party from the floor of the House of Commons, he may also have saved his political career, for defeat in Burnaby South on Monday — as many NDP insiders have put it — was simply not an option for the third-place party. Singh’s victory came in one of three byelections held Monday, as voters in key battleground areas cast ballots against the backdrop of the lingering SNC-Lavalin scandal. In York-Simcoe, the Conservatives hold onto a Greater Toronto Area riding that has been a lock for the party since 2004.And here in Outremont, a diverse and multilingual district at the heart of the Island of Montreal, voters returned to their long-established tradition of electing Liberals, 12 years after Thomas Mulcair’s breakthrough here became the symbolic forerunner to the unprecedented success of the “orange wave†election in 2011. But it was the race in Burnaby South that gobbled most of the oxygen surrounding these byelections — and for good reason. The result could decide Singh’s political fate. Read more:‘We made history,’ Jagmeet Singh tells B.C. crowd as he claims first seat in House of CommonsConservative Scot Davidson keeps York-Simcoe riding Tory blueLiberals take Outremont riding in byelectionThe NDP leader campaigned against a Liberal government he accuses of cosying up to corporate friends, falling short on affordable housing and failing to take climate change seriously. The riding was previously held by Kennedy Stewart, an NDP MP who won by about 500 votes in 2015 and resigned the seat last year to run for Vancouver mayor. David Coletto, chief executive officer of Abacus Data, said a Singh victory is the first bit of good ...
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