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.

[The Conservatives] took a lesson out of the Republican playbook of our southern neighbor: If you can’t win fair, cheat.

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).”

In ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, Cullen took a break from the cam­paign trail to speak with In These Times.

How do you explain the NDP’s sud­den ascendance?

It’s an overnight sen­sa­tion — one 54 years in the mak­ing. As a pro­gres­sive par­ty, we have offered our­selves up in ways that are sup­port­ed by val­ues that Cana­di­ans share, like respect for the envi­ron­ment, a more fair econ­o­my and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with First Nations peo­ple. Plus, an almost decade-long tri­al with neolib­er­al poli­cies has not pro­duced results. Cana­da is in a reces­sion. There’s a sense of fatigue, if not out­right hos­til­i­ty, toward the Con­ser­v­a­tive government’s approach.

We some­times pick up the mood and ten­den­cies of our south­ern neigh­bor in think­ing that there are only two choic­es and pro­ceed­ing down that path. But we have many par­ties under our par­lia­men­tary sys­tem in Cana­da, not just two, and peo­ple have options. For the first time in our country’s his­to­ry, it seems to be shap­ing up as a three-par­ty race.

How is the NDP address­ing people’s con­cerns about the economy?

On the pock­et­book lev­el, we plan to make life more afford­able. In addi­tion to a $15-per-hour min­i­mum wage, we’ve intro­duced a $15-a-day nation­al child-care pro­gram, where a fam­i­ly would pay $15 for a full day of child care. On the macro­eco­nom­ic side, we focus on giv­ing small busi­ness­es more sup­port. They are the poor cousin at the table. The large cor­po­ra­tions have got­ten all of the atten­tion and all of the breaks under the Con­ser­v­a­tives. We’ve put for­ward a plan to kick-start man­u­fac­tur­ing. We’ve lost just shy of half a mil­lion man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs in the last eight years to Mex­i­co, to Chi­na, to a whole bunch of dif­fer­ent places. The Con­ser­v­a­tives have no indus­tri­al strat­e­gy. We need to invest in infra­struc­ture to kick­start an econ­o­my that is sputtering.

What is your opin­ion of Canada’s new Fair Elec­tions Act?

The Con­ser­v­a­tives have a strange sense of irony. They name these laws to be the exact oppo­site of what their effect is. This law dis­en­fran­chis­es a whole swathe of the Cana­di­an elec­torate. They took a les­son out of the Repub­li­can play­book of our south­ern neigh­bor: If you can’t win fair, cheat. In every one of the last three elec­tions this Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment has won, they’ve been found by the courts to have cheat­ed: robo­calls, send­ing peo­ple to the wrong polling sta­tions and oth­er fraud­u­lent activ­i­ties. They’re now try­ing to make sure that cer­tain voic­es — the young, the poor, the First Nations — will find it hard to vote, all under the fraud­u­lent specter of ​“elec­toral fraud.” In one ver­sion of the Act, it pro­hib­it­ed our chief of elec­tions from encour­ag­ing peo­ple to vote! You get to a point where you’re like, ​“Alright, I under­stand: You need to rig this sys­tem in order to have a chance at being the government.”

Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harper’s crit­ics say he has bor­rowed tac­tics from U.S. pol­i­tics. What do they mean?

Well, it’s big mon­ey, wag­ing wars, refus­ing to debate in pub­lic forums, dis­en­fran­chis­ing vot­ers that are unhelp­ful to your polit­i­cal par­ty, attempt­ing to ger­ry­man­der bound­aries — every­thing they can get away with and always a lit­tle bit more. They intro­duced a bill late last year that would legal­ize the government’s abil­i­ty to spy on any Cana­di­an they see fit with­out a judge being involved. It’s iron­ic that the head of the Nation­al Firearms Asso­ci­a­tion in Cana­da, who’s obvi­ous­ly a deep con­ser­v­a­tive, is now run­ning as an inde­pen­dent sole­ly for the rea­son of try­ing to scrap this anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic bill.

What’s the NDP’s posi­tion on Keystone?

We are opposed to the project as it stands sim­ply because it’s a raw export project that takes bitu­men, dilutes it and then sends it away for val­ue to be added else­where. The NDP is not anti- devel­op­ment, we’re just anti-stupid.

How impor­tant will the vote from the First Nations be in this election?

There are 338 seats in the Cana­di­an Par­lia­ment, and in about 50 of them First Nations hold the bal­ance of pow­er. If they exer­cise their vote, they are able to swing the Par­lia­ment. Mobi­liz­ing that vote will be chal­leng­ing because of the new laws, but increas­ing­ly we’re see­ing First Nations lead­er­ship from the very top right through to the local chiefs encour­ag­ing peo­ple to get engaged. I rep­re­sent north­west­ern British Colum­bia, next to the Yukon-Alas­ka bor­der, and prob­a­bly 35 per­cent or so of this con­stituen­cy is First Nations peo­ple who live in 49 dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties. Increas­ing­ly the chiefs say, ​“Our voic­es are going to be heard at the bal­lot box.” In the past it hasn’t mat­tered — Twee­dle­dum or dumb­er. The NDP’s got a long his­to­ry with First Nations. We’ve fought for their enfran­chise­ment and have been good allies through many of the strug­gles that we’ve had over the years.

One con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor has said that the NDP under the lead­er­ship of Tom Mul­cair ​ “ has thrown much of the party’s past under its cam­paign bus.” What was he refer­ring to?

Maybe he’s express­ing some dis­ap­point­ment that we aren’t using 1950s jar­gon. But it’s 2015. We’ve mod­ern­ized our lan­guage and abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate. Maybe he’s refer­ring to the fact that for much of our past the NDP wasn’t able to win. But today, we want to be the ones mak­ing the change, not the ones stand­ing on the out­side wish­ing it were dif­fer­ent. We rep­re­sent Main Street, not Bay Street — our Wall Street.

How has lan­guage evolved from the 1950 s to the present?

There’s an evo­lu­tion in our abil­i­ty to talk about things in ways that peo­ple can under­stand. The idea of want­i­ng to debate Marx is gone. We live with the real­i­ties of peo­ple and want to reflect back pro­gres­sive val­ues and pro­grams that peo­ple can appre­ci­ate and sup­port. We under­stand how a 15-dol­lar-a-day child-care pro­gram speaks to a wide swathe of vot­ers, not exclu­sive­ly pro­gres­sive ones. Yet it’s a pro­gres­sive pol­i­cy. So it’s mar­ry­ing things that are pro­gres­sive to pro­grams and ini­tia­tives that a large group of peo­ple can accept. There used to be some notion, back in the day, when I talk to some of our more senior mem­bers, that it was a choice between pow­er or prin­ci­ples, that you couldn’t have both. I dis­agree. The NDP can­di­dates I am run­ning with want to effect change while main­tain­ing our prin­ci­ples. That’s what we’re try­ing to do in this election.

Are you opti­mistic about the NDP’s future?

Cau­tious­ly so. I’m a pro­gres­sive, right? We snatched defeat from the jaws of vic­to­ry a cou­ple of times. There’s only one poll that counts, and that’s the one on the day of the elec­tion. The Con­ser­v­a­tives and Lib­er­als are well-financed and vicious. So I am not sur­prised by their des­per­ate tactics.