Jack Layton set out to convert the federal New Democratic Party into a governing party.

More than this, Layton aimed to be prime minister, to elect a government and to steer Canada towards mainstream social democracy -- a fairer, better, more equal Canada, one practical step at a time.

Layton aimed to modernize his party and its policies.

Layton aimed for a breakthrough in Quebec, the province of his birth -- and for badly needed breakthroughs everywhere and anywhere else in Canada. The federal NDP was in ashes when he assumed the leadership. He aimed to return to the work of Tommy Douglas, David Lewis and Ed Broadbent, successful predecessors with similar goals.

So how is that all working out, a year after his passing?

A year ago at about this time, I was in Athens attending a meeting of Socialist International. The president of SI, then and now, was George Papandreou, at the time also leader of PASOK and prime minister of Greece. I had the opportunity to meet with some of his key advisers (several of them ex-Torontonians) and listened closely when the prime minister addressed the meeting.

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Events at Queen's Park over the last week tell us two things.

First, that it is not easy for a government to try to pursue three different strategies simultaneously in a minority legislature. And second, that the NDP's toolbox in a minority legislature continues to represent a challenge to opponents.

Let's begin with the "three strategies" thing. Broadly speaking, there are three ways for a government to survive life in a minority legislature.

In an interesting and well-argued column in the Calgary Herald recently, Mark Milke from the Fraser Institute took issue with my last post here. I can't resist replying to one of his points.

Mr. Milke paraphrases me this way: "Brian Topp wants sovereign resource funds to invest in uneconomic projects too expensive for the private sector -- this instead of shipping 'raw unprocessed resources to Texas and to China.' Topp mentions Norway's resource fund as an example."

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We have been doing something unusual in Canada in recent weeks. We've been having a substantive debate about the basic direction of our economy. That's what happens when there are real parties facing each other in Parliament, who have real disagreements about real issues.

Just about at the same time that people in the province of Quebec decided, in overwhelming majority, that decisive action was required by their provincial government to protect the French language, people in western Canada decided that equally decisive action was required by their provincial governments to ensure control of their own natural resources.

The federal government of the day (led by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau) more-or-less accepted the Quebec National Assembly's right to address the language issue. But the same government waged a battle of sumo-like proportions to try to wrestle control over oil, potash, uranium and other resources from western Canadian provinces.

Which didn't go over very well.

This weekend, the runner-up party in the recent Greek election, Syriza, seemed to rule out joining with New Democracy and PASOK to give them a majority in parliament. Instead, Syriza cheekily invited a smaller rival left-wing party, Democratic Left, to drink from that poisoned chalice in their place.

At least in the short term, this looks like excellent political hardball on the part of Syriza. They either get to go into opposition in the new parliament while their opponents further discredit themselves. Or there will be another election in June, in which Syriza seems positioned to make further gains -- perhaps enough to form a government.

Syriza then proposes to apply the same hardball approach to the European Union and to the International Monetary Fund.

On election day in Paris, Place de la Bastille (home of the left) was full and Place de la Concorde (home of the right) was empty. As sure a sign as any that the Socialist Party was about to win the presidency, as it went on to do. Francois Hollande is the new president of France.

Why did Nicolas Sarkozy lose? He started remarkably well only five short years ago. Sarkozy's 2007 campaign captured a mood in France for a "rupture" from its own economic and social model. France was bored with itself, worried about its economy, tired of riots and debates about accommodating immigrants, and wanted to get on board the global economic bubble then roaring. Sarkozy offered a "hyper-presidency" that would deal with all of those issues and many more.

"For 'tis the sport to have the enginer hoist with his owne petar, an't shall go hard. But I will delve one yard below their mines, and blow them to the moon." -- Hamlet, Act 3

"Hoist with your own petard." Meaning: "Injured by the device that you intended to use to injure others." -- The Phrase Finder

For many years, Liberals have been eager advocates of "strategic voting" -- the idea that it makes sense to vote for a party you don't support in order to avoid the election of a party you don't support even more.

A pitch to this effect has been part of the closing argument of every federal Liberal campaign since at least 1993.

Thunder Bay MP Bruce Hyer resigned from the NDP caucus this week for an interesting mix of reasons. He was disappointed he didn't get appointed to the NDP shadow cabinet. He is concerned the party will reintroduce a long-gun registry. And he rejects, in principle, the idea that the political party whose colours he carried in the last election can tell him what to think, what to say, or how to vote.

Now let's look at the Alberta election -- a true "Dewey beats Truman" fiasco for Canada's political commentariat, which predicted victory for Wildrose on the basis of the latest crop of junk polls, and then got to cover an impressive (as measured by seats) landslide for the Alberta Progressive Conservatives.

Why did Wildrose lose so convincingly?