OTTAWA – Preliminary results showed Jagmeet Singh won a special election to fill an empty seat in the parliamentary constituency of Burnaby-South, in the Pacific province of British Columbia.
Singh captured just under 40 percent of the vote.
A practicing Sikh, Singh made headlines in October 2017 when he became the first person from an ethnic minority to be elected leader of a major Canadian political party. But he has failed to lift the New Democratic Party (NDP), which trails its rivals badly.
The NDP and the Liberals – who compete for the same center-left segment of the electorate – will face each other in a federal election this October. The worse the New Democrats do, the better Trudeau’s chances become.
“This staves off all the talk that Singh would have to quit … at least for the moment he is vindicated,” said Richard Johnston, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia. (Reuters)
