QUOTES: From the campaign trail

Some notable quotes from the federal election campaign Tuesday:

"We’ve got a system where, when close to two-thirds of Canadians or certainly 60 per cent vote against you, the headlines are about how you’re going to get a majority and win the election. In other words, you’ve lost but you’ve won." – NDP Leader Jack Layton on Canada’s "strange" electoral system.

"We have this historic problem that we have a quarter of our population – the people of Quebec – who have never signed on to the Constitution. It can’t go on forever." – Layton on whether he would reopen the Constitution to appease Quebec.

"I think he soft-pedals the constitutional stuff in English and pushes the pedal down in French." – Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff on Layton’s constitutional musings.

"(Canadians) do not want an unstable government that is going to spend time arguing about the Constitution. We went through that for 20 years." – Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Layton constitutional musings.

"That’s their asymmetrical federalism: Ottawa helps Newfoundland but doesn’t give Quebec a penny." – Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe arguing that the NDP’s promise to help with Lower Churchill development is unfair.

"I’m saying that we’re bringing forward a new idea and that is to make Quebec a country." – Duceppe responding to a question asking if the Bloc is an "old" party.

"That won’t stop me fighting until the very end to make sure we have a good number of the members of the Bloc in Ottawa as possible." – Duceppe on recent polls suggesting support for the separatist party is faltering in Quebec.

"Come on, folks, let’s be serious. We’ve got to choose a government on the 2nd of May; we can’t choose a bunch of boy scouts on this issue." – Ignatieff on NDP plans to pull Canadian troops out of Afghanistan.