NDP Rising Star Nathan Cullen on How Republican Tactics are Infecting Canadian Politics, and More

[Judi Lynn]

October 5, 2015

NDP Rising Star Nathan Cullen on How Republican Tactics are Infecting Canadian Politics, and More

The rising star of the socialist-leaning New Democratic Party discusses how Canadian Conservatives are learning from their neighbors to the south.

For several weeks in August and September, opinion polls indicated that on October 19, Canadians would elect their first Parliament controlled by the socialist-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP). Though the race has tightened in the past cuple weeks, there is still a chance that the NDP could win. Should that happen, Tom Mulcair, an attorney from Quebec, will become prime minister of Canada. And in a Mulcair government, it is a sure bet that NDP rising star Nathan Cullen will be named to head a key ministry. A former strategic planning and conflict resolution consultant who lives in Smithers, a British Columbia town of 5,000, Cullen represents a district the size of Norway with a population of about 90,000 in the northwest corner of the province. He has served in Parliament since 2004, when, at the age of 31, he beat the Conservative incumbent.

Cullen won the hearts of environmentalists across Canada for spearheading opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline, which is set to run from the Alberta tar sands to Kitimat, a small port city in his district. In 2012, he mounted a dark-horse challenge to Mulcair for leadership of the NDP, coming in a surprising third at the NDP convention. His stellar performance during the party debates thrust him into the national spotlight.

In Maclean’s Magazine’s 2014 Parliamentarian of the Year Awards, Cullen’s fellow MPs voted him “Most Knowledgeable MP,” giving him more votes than Conservative MP and Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The NDP was established in 1961, when the Canadian Labour Congress (the equivalent of the AFL-CIO) affiliated with a democratic socialist party called “Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (Farmer-Labour-Socialist).”

More:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/18376/nathan_cullen_NDP_republican_tactics

[gordianot]

1. Canada should really build a fence and get Trump to pay for it.

Canadians should be wary of what infects American politics.

[Overseas]

2. K&R. I'd love to the NDP win!

[MisterP]

3. after the PCs disintegrated the old populist Harper--fresh in Albertan drag--created a

new party in the GOP's mold 2003: if Canadians laughed at the one creationist running in the whole country, he could at least scrape together every regionalist resentment and popped-collar meathead and passive-aggressively-racist Anglo "old stock" (a phrase he got from his pequiste allies)