MONTREAL—Stéphane Moraille, already a one-hit wonder, is determined not to become the symbol of another fleeting phenomenon in next Monday’s byelection.

Moraille is perhaps best known for her few minutes in the spotlight 15 years ago as the soulful voice of the Bran Van 3000 song “Drinking in L.A.” She is also a Haitian-born entertainment lawyer who is representing the New Democratic Party in the northern Montreal riding of Bourassa, which the Liberals have locked up in all but two elections going back to 1968.

Vacated by longtime Liberal MP Denis Coderre, who is now mayor of Montreal, the NDP is determined to demonstrate in Bourassa that its Quebec breakthrough in the 2011 election is a shifting political trend and not just a blip. Whether it be MPs coming to help out from Ottawa or party positions seemingly tailored to Bourassa’s demographics, there is no shortage of effort going into making that point.

“When we first started, people were like clams,” Moraille said this week. “But now everywhere we go it’s like, ‘It’s the NDP, it’s you, Stéphane. I know you. I’m going to vote for you.’ The stronghold that was there is no longer because they see us as an alternative.”

All byelections are viewed as a referendum on some issue, be it a government’s performance, a specific policy or a pressing community matter. The riding of Bourassa has high unemployment, the notoriety of its high crime and street gangs as well as the worries and challenges common to all neighbourhoods with a large immigrant population.

Any one of these could form the basis of an election platform in Bourassa. But the pure politics of this race will define which party —Justin Trudeau’s Liberals or Thomas Mulcair’s NDP — has the opposition momentum less than two years from the next federal election in 2015.

Liberal candidate Emmanuel Dubourg, a Haitian-born accountant and former manager with the Canada Revenue Agency, put his money on Trudeau in leaving his seat with the provincial Liberals in the Quebec legislature to seek a spot with the third party in the House of Commons.

“I like his vision and when the opportunity presented itself I thought that it was the best choice to make to continue to serve the people, because that’s what being an MP is all about,” he said.

The only poll conducted in the riding has given an overwhelming advantage to Dubourg and the Liberals. But that hasn’t blunted the NDP’s combative spirit.

First the party posted election signs criticizing Dubourg for quitting his provincial seat less than a year after being elected and then collecting a $100,000 transition allowance. Moraille’s platform is also filled with goodies aimed at Haitian expats in the riding. She has promised legislation to introduce harsher sentences for violent attacks against taxi drivers, a great number of whom are of Haitian origin in Montreal, as well as a push for a $4,000 tax credit for the purchase of hybrid vehicles.

The NDP has also urged the Conservative government to protest a recent decision by a Dominican Republic tribunal that would strip the citizenship of some 250,000 Haitians living on that side of the border that divides the Hispaniola island.

Dubourg boasted of his close relationship with Haiti’s embassy and consular staff in Ottawa but said he had never been personally asked to intervene in the matter and thought it improper to get mixed up in the affairs of two independent countries.

“I find the decision of the Dominican government deplorable, but I won’t come out on it just to pick up Haitian votes in Bourassa. That’s what the NDP is doing,” he said, adding that his actions in the community over the years speak louder than the NDP’s empty words.

But one organizer in Montreal’s Haitian community, Frantz André Trouillot, says the issue is more sensitive than Dubourg’s dismissal suggests. After repeated requests for the campaigning politician to take a public stance on the issue, Trouillot says he was physically prevented from raising the matter with the Liberal leader at a campaign event last week. He said Moraille brings to politics “a sincerity and honesty that I do not find in Mr. Dubourg.”

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But that may not be enough for Moraille, Mulcair and the rest of the NDP caucus to show that they have amassed the political power and on-the-ground organization to bring a Liberal fortress crumbling down.

“I think in Bourassa they do see themselves being Liberal,” said Trouillot. “The fact that (former Liberal MP Denis) Coderre has always seen himself as a Haitian, because he’s lived and grown up with Haitians and been able to say a few Creole words, has given the community in Bourassa a sense of ownership.”

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