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That shows a couple of things: First, he must have saved up a few bucks or has a good credit rating. The cost to purchase or rent a home here is still brutally high.

It also shows this byelection is crucial to his ongoing political career, and he wants to minimize the risk of a voter backlash.

This is an NDP-held seat, so Singh should win it. But stress the word “should.” If he loses, it would be disastrous for him, and threaten his leadership of the party.

To understand why, consider Singh’s underwhelming record so far after 10 wobbly months leading the federal NDP.

The party is trailing badly in the polls, currently tracking at around 18 per cent. That’s well behind Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives, who are duking it out at around 35-to-36 per cent each. Singh trails Trudeau and Scheer in job-approval rating, too.

Even worse for Singh is the NDP’s dire situation in Quebec, where the party made a historic breakthrough under the late Jack Layton’s “Orange Wave.”

The wave has turned into a dried-up trickle under Singh. In a Quebec byelection in June, the party eked out an embarrassing 8.7 per cent of the vote in a riding the NDP won in 2011.

The money is drying up, too. In the last fiscal quarter, the NDP raised just $872,401. The Liberals raised over $3 million and the Conservatives raised more than $6 million over the same period.

All of this has some NDP insiders quietly grumbling about the party’s predicament with just over a year to go until the next election.