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In addition to Ottawa-Vanier, byelections will be held Monday in a Montreal riding, in one in Markham, Ont., and in two ridings in Calgary.

All are considered safe seats for their incumbent parties: the Liberals in Ottawa, Montreal and Markham, and the Conservatives in Calgary.

Nonetheless, Fair Vote Canada hopes to boost the number of NDP and Green votes as an expression of dissatisfaction with the Trudeau government’s decision to shelve electoral-reform plans.

In Ottawa-Vanier, Lavergne sent Fair Vote Canada supporters an email — a copy of which was obtained by the Post — in which he discussed the content and distribution strategy for 15,000 postcard-style flyers.

But with about 87,000 eligible voters in Ottawa-Vanier, Fair Vote Canada needed some help to identify how it could best distribute these flyers to maximum effect — so it turned to the NDP.

The memo obtained by the Post acknowledges that Fair Vote Canada got “some help from the NDP campaign of candidate Emilie Taman to identify priority ridings,” a fact confirmed by Lavergne.

Later in that memo, the author writes, “The NDP office also helped us with Elections Canada maps that we might have had trouble getting ourselves” and “The NDP had prepared maps for us of their recommended priority 50 polls. These were very useful.”

Again, Lavergne confirmed these facts.

Lavergne also wrote: “The NDP … gave us a high-resolution pdf map of the whole riding, which indicated the boundaries of all the polls. This would prove invaluable later on.”

In addition to providing help with maps, the NDP also provided strategic advice to Fair Vote Canada about where to deploy its canvassers.

“We ended up covering 48 of the 50 priority polls on our blitz day … and asked the NDP for more maps,” the Google Document’s author wrote. “They provided eight more on the spot, but ran dry after that. They suggested that we not bother leafleting zones that were quite conservative or with low voter turnout. And that we should focus on the U of O campus and getting into some of the apartment blocks within the zones already identified.”