Though the NDP hasn’t nominated its candidate yet in the downtown Montreal riding of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, Thomas Mulcair is confident it’s a seat he can snatch from Liberal MP and former astronaut Marc Garneau.

When an interview Mulcair gave with the French magazine L’actualité appeared online Thursday, a lot eyes understandably gravitated towards his comments about the proposed Energy East pipeline.

Little, if any, attention seems to have been paid to a comment he made about picking up additional seats in Quebec.

“That’s ambitious,” the L’actualité interviewer said in response to Mulcair’s optimism. “You elected 59 MPs out of 75 seats there in 2011. There’s a reason they called it the orange wave.”

“I know, but we can do better. I intend to win Liberal ridings, like NDG-Westmount,” Mulcair answered.

Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount is a new federal riding born out of the 2012 federal riding redistribution that added six seats to the Quebec electoral map, four of which are in Montreal.

That process split up Garneau’s existing riding of Westmount—Ville-Marie, which he won by 642 votes over the NDP candidate in 2011 after a much more substantial victory in 2008.

He was acclaimed as the Liberal candidate there in April 2014.

The new riding continues to border Mulcair’s own Outrement riding, and eight candidates are vying for the NDP nomination there.

According to the political website Pundits’ Guide, that nomination meeting is scheduled for August 16.

The NDP nomination candidates include Montreal city councillor Peter McQueen and Sue Montgomery, formerly a reporter with the Montreal Gazette.