MONTREAL -- In this election campaign, there is no Plan B for Jack Layton.
The ever-optimistic NDP leader made that clear while glad-handing for votes Saturday in Montreal's bustling downtown Atwater farmer's market.
At the outset five weeks ago, Layton declared he wanted to be prime minister -- a script was gamely sticking to as the party's federal campaign rolled into its final weekend.
Layton clings to the idea even though poll after poll suggests his party is nowhere within a country mile of being able to form a government, and may well be bleeding support in vote-rich Ontario.
"Polls look backward; I look forward. That's the difference," a defiant Layton said Saturday.
But the question would not go away: If you don't win? What then?
"There's the 'If'-word; I don't go there," he insisted before falling back on his familiar campaign slogan: "Don't let them tell you it can't be done."
Layton was asked whether there was anything short of forming a government that would constitute a victory.
"No," he replied with a chuckle.
Voting NDP on Tuesday will be an "historic opportunity for Canadians to change the course of the country," Layton insisted following an afternoon rally at a downtown Montreal bar.
"I'm not a pessimist, I'm optimistic about what lays ahead."
That whimsical, go-for-broke approach stands in stark contrast to the last two campaigns, where in the final stretch it became clear NDP support was being squeezed and drained away.
In both of those instances, Layton charted a more pragmatic course towards playing the kingmaker in what were clearly going to be minority governments -- something polls are again suggesting could be the outcome of Tuesday's vote.
Layton once infamously asked Liberal supporters in 2006 to "lend" him their votes in order to stop Stephen Harper and the Conservatives from forming a majority government.
It is precisely that kind of vote splitting that infuriates Liberals even to this day -- proof of which came early in the campaign when a handful of young Liberals took to picketing Layton rallies, blaming him for the rise of the Conservatives.
They won't say it in so many words, but NDP strategists suggest with a wink and a nudge that their aim is to replace the Liberals as the Official Opposition, and as the choice of centre-left voters in much the same way Labour has done to the Liberals in Great Britain.
Throughout the campaign the NDP strategy has been to ignore Liberal Leader Stephane Dion entirely and paint Layton as the antithesis of Harper, hoping voters take from that the suggestion that the Liberals are a spent political force.
Only since the televised leaders' debates has Layton even uttered Dion's name at public events.
The fracturing of the left-leaning -- or so-called "progressive" -- vote was on the minds of some of those whom Layton tried to woo Saturday.
Jean Proulx buttonholed the NDP leader in front of a vegetable stand at the Montreal market and implored him to rise above the divide.
"For the purpose of this election, when we need to stop Stephen Harper, the parties have to think beyond their narrow partisan interest and think about the bigger picture," said Proulx, a graduate student at Concordia University.
Layton told most of the Quebecers he greeted that they can "do better" than the separatist Bloc Quebecois.
"I have a sense now that people want to move beyond the old debates and Quebecers want to participate in a movement for change right across the country," he said.
"That's why we're attracting candidates and supporters from all the other parties right now."
New Democrats have poured a lot of effort and at least $1 million in advertising money into the province, hoping to convince voters that they're an alternative to the Liberals and Conservatives.
If you look at the polls it hasn't borne much fruit: a Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll released Saturday had the NDP a distant fourth place at eight per cent, well behind the Bloc Quebecois at 41 per cent, the Tories at 23 and the Liberals at 21.
But the Montreal rally -- with over 650 people -- stands in stark contrast to the last two federal campaigns when New Democrats had trouble filling halls.
Layton took aim at rising Bloc fortunes, saying he gets the sense more and more Quebecers want to throw Harper's Conservatives out of office.
Layton says the Bloc members are "good people" but they're ineffective and the province needs to move beyond that.
Despite the polls, New Democrats cling to the hope they can add at least two more Montreal-area seats to the one they already hold in the riding of Outremont, where incumbent Thomas Mulcair came to the House of Commons in a byelection.
The Canadian Press
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