"Only the NDP can beat the Conservatives here in British Columbia," Mulcair said.

New Democrats are expecting tight three-way fights in Vancouver.

But they believe they can pick up three seats on Vancouver Island and are confident of adding two others on the mainland, including the newly created riding of Pitt Meadows Maple Ridge, a scenic, largely blue collar community east of high-priced Vancouver.

In fact, part of the NDP strategy seems to hinge on making gains in areas where the economy is under strain or has been hammered by globalized trade.

Mulcair pointed out his campaign swung last week through a vast swath of southwestern Ontario, once the manufacturing heartland of the country.

"Six towns in six Conservative ridings," he said. "You knew, and I knew in those ridings the NDP was going to be winning, and everything that's been published since then is proving that. So, when we went from Brantford to Waterloo to Stratford to London to Sarnia to Essex, we knew that the only party that was going to be defeating the Conservatives in those blue ridings was the NDP."

It's not the first time the party has made the same bet. The NDP concentrated on those same economic hard-luck regions in previous campaigns, only to come up short.

A different dynamic is at play in this campaign with the Conservatives signing the multi-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the NDP has seized upon as a potential life line for the campaign.

Throughout his campaign stops over the holiday weekend, Mulcair hammered the "secret" agreement, which he says Conservative Leader Stephen Harper tripped over himself to achieve before the election.

"Everybody saw him coming. He got played for a chump," Mulcair said.

The NDP repeated their demand Monday for the government to release the full text of the agreement so the public can decide for itself whether it's a good deal.

By Murray Brewster, The Canadian Press