OTTAWA—The New Democratic Party isn’t ruling out the possibility that federal leader Jagmeet Singh will run for a seat in the Montreal neighbourhood of Outremont, a riding that served as an important toehold for the party’s 2011 “Orange Wave” in Quebec.

Singh’s press secretary James Smith played down a report Tuesday in the Journal de Montréal that said Singh is “open to the idea” of running there when Tom Mulcair, the former NDP leader who won the riding in 2007, vacates the seat at the end of the current parliamentary session. But Smith did not deny the possibility that Singh could vie for the seat.

“It’s not a ‘no.’ But the byelection hasn’t even been called,” he said.

Smith said Singh is willing to consider advice on whether he should run in other ridings, too — including the rural Québec riding of Chicoutimi–Le Fjord, where a byelection will be held this spring.

“What the leader has always said is that he’s open to considering any place, and he’s open to counsel on that,” Smith said.

“I know that he’s not going to close the door.”

The NDP leader does not hold a seat in the House of Commons, and has been under pressure to spend more time in Ottawa amidst grumblings from some members of his caucus in recent weeks. MPs held an unscheduled meeting with Singh last month to discuss how he handled a slate of media reports about his attendance at events where people advocated for an independent Sikh state in India. The following week, after public criticism from NDP ranks, Singh flip-flopped on his decision to punish a veteran MP for voting against the party on a Conservative motion about the government’s decision to attach an “attestation” to respect LGBTQ and reproductive rights to applications for summer jobs funding.

Then, on Sunday, Mulcair said during an appearance on CTV’s Question Period that Singh should get a seat. “Parliament is very important as an institution and it’s important for a political leader to get in there as soon as possible so that Canadians can get to know him,” Mulcair said.

Singh succeeded Mulcair as NDP leader in October 2017, when he made the jump from provincial politics in Ontario and won the race with a majority on the first ballot. In the months since, he was repeatedly said that he’s comfortable with his decision not to rush to win a seat in the House of Commons, and has spent much of his time touring the country. Singh has previously said he has no concrete plans to seek a seat before the 2019 general election, but would run in a byelection in a riding that “makes sense.”

Karl Bélanger, a long-time NDP insider who was Mulcair’s principal secretary and Jack Layton’s press secretary, said Singh’s team should “use caution” when deliberating about whether to run in an Outremont byelection. Given that the riding was a Liberal stronghold for decades before Mulcair’s breakthrough in 2007, Bélanger said there’s no guarantee that his supporters would transfer their votes to the new NDP leader.

“If there is one thing the NDP leader can’t afford to do right now, it would be to lose in a byelection,” Bélanger said.

Montreal-based pollster Jean-Marc Léger said chatter about Singh running in Outremont is likely in response to Mulcair’s statement Sunday that the leader needs to win a seat. But he said his firm’s recent polling puts the NDP and its leader far behind the Liberals in Québec, and that there would be no safe seats for the party in the province if an election were held today. “He has to be elected somewhere, but I’m pretty sure Québec will not be his first choice,” Léger said.

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But Pierre Anctil, a history professor at the University of Ottawa who actually lives in Outremont and specializes in Canadian identity and Québec culture, said it’s far from impossible that Singh could win the riding — even as an anglophone from Ontario.

“I would say, in all of Quebec, his best chances are in a riding that would resemble this,” Anctil said. “I think it’s smart to keep [his options] open.”

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