NDP leader Jack Layton speaks with former Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe at a leaders debate held prior to the May, 2011 federal election.
_ Photograph by: Geoff Robins/AFP/Getty Images

MONTREAL - Somebody should tell Smilin' Jack Layton that the federal election campaign ended four weeks ago.
Because the leader of the New Democratic Party continues to make promises to French-speaking Quebecers.
And in the process, he is raising unrealistic expectations among them that a national party that aspires to govern can act as a New Bloc Québécois, placing their interests ahead of those of other Canadians.
At a meeting of the NBQ's - excuse me, the NDP's Quebec council in Montreal on Saturday, Layton promised to fight to maintain this province's current share of seats in the House of Commons.
It will be interesting to see whether delegates from the rest of the country to the NDP's national convention in three weeks will agree with their leader that Quebec should be over-represented relative to its share of the country's population.
More generally, it will be interesting to see how far the convention goes to keep Layton's promise to add substance to Parliament's 2006 recognition of "the Québécois" as a nation.
And now that the NDP forms the official opposition, its policies will come under closer scrutiny from outside the party, scrutiny that the policies might not be able to withstand.
On Quebec secession, the NDP's policy was ambiguous even before he wavered in his interpretation last week.
The policy is contained in the Sherbrooke Declaration adopted by the party's Quebec wing in 2005 and by the national party a year later (online, go to scr.bi/lZmba2). Among other things, the declaration says the NDP would "recognize" a majority of 50 per cent plus one in a referendum.
It appears to contradict itself by implying that agreement to Quebec's secession would not be automatic. It would be left up to the federal government to determine "its own process ... in response to" a referendum Yes vote.
More important, although the declaration doesn't mention it, the government would be bound by the 2000 federal Clarity Act setting conditions for negotiating secession, for which the NDP voted.
So the question for the NDP is whether it still supports the Clarity Act, and if not, how it would amend it.
On language, the NDP proposes to apply Bill 101's "key principles" concerning French in the workplace to private companies governed by the Canada Labour Code. This is so that, as Layton and his Quebec lieutenant Thomas Mulcair put it, "a woman working in a bank would have the same right to work in French as a woman working in a caisse populaire across the street."
But as sovereignist analyst Jean-François Lisée has pointed out, the protection for the caisse-populaire worker would still be more effective, because the legislation the NDP has proposed does not contain Bill 101's provisions for enforcement.
And the NDP's proposal would create new injustices. It would offer some protection to a woman working in a bank in Gatineau but none to the French-speaking woman working in another branch of the same bank just across the river in Ottawa.
Nor would it offer any protection for the right of an English-speaking woman employed by the same bank in Quebec to work in her language.
Layton says the NDP proposal would take nothing away from English-speaking Quebecers. In strictly legal terms, he appears to be right.
But the proposal could also have political consequences.
By introducing the principle of "asymmetrical" - unequal - language rights into federal legislation, it could undermine public acceptance of federal official bilingualism based on an understanding that the two languages will have equal legal status everywhere in the country.
And that could be to the disadvantage of the officiallanguage minorities and of national unity.
dmacpherson@montrealgazette.com
Twitter: @MacphersonGaz