The year 2017 is going to be a big one. I will be crisscrossing Canada from coast to coast to coast and I have already put on two thousand kilometers visiting across the Prairies. When we launched our campaign just over a month ago, we asked people across Canada to join us in building a movement for fundamental political change. One of the key aspects of building this movement is connecting with people in communities across the country. We're starting in the Prairies -- my home region. This is a part of the country where the NDP's roots run deep. It is in this part of the country that a progressive political movement -- the CCF -- was founded. This is the land of J. S. Woodsworth and Tommy Douglas. This is where I grew up learning what it means to be a New Democrat.

NDP leadership candidate Niki Ashton speaks during a leadership debate in Montreal, Sunday, March 26, 2017. (Photo: Graham Hughes/CP) Originally, we had planned to drive across western Canada to communities across the Prairies through the Rocky Mountains and finally to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Our trip was to include stops in British Columbia, but our brothers and sisters from the B.C. NDP campaign asked that leadership candidates stay away during the election period. I believe it is important that we support our provincial counterparts during elections, as I have done many times before, but I want to respect those running the campaign and I do not want to distract from the key goal of electing a NDP government in B.C. If I am to be elected as leader of the federal NDP, I will work tirelessly with our provincial counterparts to elect progressive governments. Solidarity isn't just a word: we need to practice it. Our goal is nothing less than to build a movement for fundamental political change. Change in the face of the two big challenges of our time, growing inequality and climate change. This means rejecting the agenda that has brought us here, the neoliberal agenda, of privatization, deregulation, austerity, bad trade deals and growing corporate concentration. It is time to stand up to the billionaires, banks and corporations who are behind this agenda. It is time to challenge the Liberal and Conservative parties who have promoted the neoliberal mantra. Canadians are being sold out. Working people and those living in poverty are being pushed further to the margins. We can and we must change that. That's why this tour is also about economic justice. We launched the tour in Thompson, my home town, in front of the railway that was privatized by the Liberals in the 1990s, all but given away to an American billionaire who just last year, without any notice, shut it down. That's why we're calling for the re-nationalization of the Port of Churchill. There are similar struggles against corporate greed and economic injustice in communities across the country.