Manitoba NDP MP Niki Ashton has entered the NDP leadership race in a bid to pull the party further to the left.

Ashton has officially registered to run for party leadership, making her the fourth candidate to enter the race ahead of the first official debate this weekend in Ottawa and launched her campaign a day before international women’s day.

Ashton, the party’s critic for jobs and employment who notably campaigned for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, announced her leadership bid Tuesday morning at an event in Ottawa where she pledged to rail against “the elites” and fight against “neoliberal” policies from “rightwing Liberal governments.”

“Decades of neoliberal policies have had dramatic impacts across our country,” she said in a speech to supporters in Ottawa.

“There’s been a lot of focus on what’s been happening in the U.S. recently, particularly with the election of Donald Trump,” she said. “The reality is that we have our own Donald Trumps here in Canada.

“Before the climate change denial of the Trump administration, we had ten years of a Stephen Harper government. And we have some of the same social, environmental and economic trends here in our own country.”

Ashton’s vision forward for the party focuses around calls for bolstered minority rights for groups like LGBTQ, indigenous people and women, and fighting inequality with policies from the left of the spectrum.

Ashton said she supports the principles behind the controversial LEAP manifesto, but will work with party rank-and-file who disagree with outright rejecting new pipelines and oil development.

She pledged Tuesday to oppose pipelines which “violate Indigenous rights and threaten our environment.”

Ashton said there needs to be “social licence for pipelines to go forward” and “respect for Indigenous rights and environmental regulation,” and noted that the Energy East project, which would run through Quebec, doesn’t have that.

Ashton promised a “jobs strategy that opposes unfair trade deals, and invests in infrastructure including housing, green, and social infrastructure,” public and social ownership and “action to break up the growing concentration of corporate power in Canada,” and judicial reforms for “racially discriminatory justice and incarceration systems.”

Her campaign also includes pushing for pharmacare, dental care, and better access to mental health services, along with fighting against precarious work conditions.

Northern Ontario MP Charlie Angus, B.C. MP Peter Julian and Quebec MP Guy Caron – have already announced their bids. Ontario NDP MPP Jagmeet Singh and former union leader Sid Ryan are also rumoured to be considering runs of their own.

Matching Peter Julian’s promise on student debt, Ashton is also pledging to scrap tuition fees and create a “student debt forgiveness strategy.”

On the weekend political talk-show circuit, Ashton said the party needs to get back to its “roots” after “the Liberals out-lefted” the NDP in the last election – something that fellow challenger Guy Caron disagrees with.

He told iPolitics last week that the party’s platform was “very progressive” overall in 2015, despite its promise to balance budgets which made it seem otherwise.

“I don’t think universal healthcare, pharmacare and childcare is conservative,” he said. “I don’t accept the premise that Liberals were to our left. They were not.”

Ashton also ran in the 2012 leadership race, but didn’t make it past the first ballot. Tuesday, Ashton said the party didn’t offer Canadians the “inspiring vision” it needed to in 2015, and said the country faces challenges that are “too significant” to only “offer incremental changes or an incremental vision.”

“We need a bold, progressive vision to tackle growing inequality, to tackle climate change,” she said.

With a smaller expected field of candidates than last time — likely far fewer than the fourteen the Conservatives have — Ashton may be the only woman to run for the party leadership this year.