Nathan Cullen

Cullen announced on March 1, 2019 that he would not run for re-election in the 2019 election.

As part of the Take Back Our Coast campaign, Cullen toured dozens of communities around British Columbia's north, interior, lower mainland and across Vancouver Island promoting Bill C-628 and raising awareness about the potential impacts of a pipeline or supertanker spill from Northern Gateway on fisheries, tourism and communities. On April 1, 2015, the bill came to a vote at second reading in the House of Commons, and was defeated by a count of 141-120, with all government MPs voting against.

After the 2015 election, Cullen was appointed the NDP critic for Environment and Climate Change and Democratic Reform in the 42nd Parliament.

On March 20, 2014, Cullen replaced Peggy Nash as Finance Critic for the Official Opposition just days after former Natural Resources minister Joe Oliver was named Minister of Finance. Upon taking up the post, Cullen emphasized his previous occupation as a small business owner in northern British Columbia against Oliver's previous career as a Merrill Lynch executive and promised to bring a "Main Street" perspective to challenge Oliver's "Bay Street" background. In March 2015, Cullen attacked Joe Oliver over his avoidance of Question Period after repeated delays in introducing the budget after the drop in oil prices.

On September 23, 2014, Cullen tabled Bill C-628 (short-titled An Act to Defend the Pacific Northwest) in the House of Commons, which would ban supertankers from the Queen Charlotte Sound, the Hecate Strait and the Dixon Entrance, as well as modify the National Energy Board Act to require any pipeline review to take into account the impact of any proposal on employment in the refining and upgrading sectors, and require the National Energy Board to deepen its consultations with communities and First Nations. The bill was a response to the National Energy Board's approval of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.

On November 22, 2014, Cullen was named Most Knowledgeable Parliamentarian at the Maclean's Magazine Parliamentarian of the Year Awards in Ottawa, edging out Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who placed second in votes.

On April 20, 2012 Cullen was named House Leader for the Official Opposition in Thomas Mulcair's first Shadow Cabinet Shuffle. Cullen replaced long time Ontario MP Joe Comartin as House Leader, with Comartin being named Critic for Democratic Reform.

In 2011, Cullen was elected for a fourth term with 55% of all votes cast - the highest plurality in the riding since 1962. In the 41st Parliament, Cullen served as Chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Privacy, Access to Information and Ethics. He was also the Associate Critic for Natural Resources, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, and Environment and Sustainable Development before resigning from his roles to participate in the NDP Leadership race. The 2013 Hill Times Annual Most Valuable Politician & All Politics Poll awarded Cullen 3rd place in the "Best Up-and-comer MP" category tied with Elizabeth May.

Following the death of party leader Jack Layton, the NDP began a leadership race. Cullen announced his official candidacy on September 30, 2011. In his opening speech, Cullen stated his vision for a new and progressive kind of politics, saying "now's the time for an honest discussion about the direction our politics is going in...and how we must change it for the better." Cullen also argued the choice between the economy and the environment is unnecessary, but that a green economy is a balance between creating jobs and protecting the environment. He cast himself as a pro-business candidate

On August 6, 2010, he and his wife became parents of twin boys at Mills Memorial Hospital.

In 2009 Cullen created a contest in his constituency called Create Your Canada which challenges students between grades 5 and 12 to submit proposals for federal legislation. Two winners are picked each year and are flown to Ottawa to watch their submissions introduced in the House of Commons as private member's bills. In 2009, two bills were introduced including Bill C-399, which proposed a ban on the mining and export of asbestos, and Bill C-400, which encouraged the Government of Canada to support the development of cycling friendly infrastructure.

On June 4, 2008, the House of Commons passed C-377, a private member bill introduced by Jack Layton. Cullen presented the bill to the Environment committee. However, Bill C-377 also died in the Senate when the NDP and Liberals withheld its confidence, causing the 2008 Canadian federal election. The bill was reintroduced in the 40th Parliament as Climate Change Accountability Act (Bill C-311).

Following the election of October 2008, Cullen was named the New Democrat Critic for Natural Resources and Energy. In this role he chaired the NDP's Green Economy Taskforce, working on ways to help create employment while meeting our responsibilities to the planet's future generations and promoted sustainable energy development through a study of Canada's Energy Security at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Natural Resources. Cullen also led an NDP effort to secure a bulk oil tanker ban on the north coast of British Columbia which led to the passage in the House of Commons of a motion calling for such a ban by a close vote of 143 - 138.

Cullen was unchallenged as the NDP candidate going into the 2006 election where he faced Conservative Party candidate and former Member of Parliament Mike Scott, Liberal Party candidate and Prince Rupert mortgage specialist Gordon Stamp-Vincent, Green Party candidate Phil Brienesse of Smithers, and Rod Taylor of the Christian Heritage Party. The election was seen as a two-way race between Cullen and Scott. Their party leaders both visited the riding, Stephen Harper in late-December to Prince Rupert and Jack Layton with a mid-January stop in Terrace. Scott ran an aggressive campaign attacking the Liberal candidate, filing a request with Elections Canada for an investigation into Cullen's campaign finances, and using signage saying "Re-elect Scott", despite the fact that Cullen was the incumbent. Cullen was effective at forcing Scott to defend issues from his time in office during the 1990s while Scott made Cullen defend his vote to support the Canadian Firearms Registry despite promising to vote against it. Cullen went on to win by an unexpectedly large margin, 15%, over Scott while the NDP elected 29 of its candidates nationwide to the 39th Parliament, which was led by Prime-Minister Stephen Harper with a minority government.,

In April 2006, Cullen introduced a Private Member's Bill (Phthalate Control Act Bill C-307) to ban phthalates, a chemical in many plastics, from products intended for infants and toddlers. The bill passed through all stages in the House of Commons but died on the order paper in the Senate when the 39th Parliament was dissolved. The proposal was subsequently adopted by Government and in June 2009 new regulations were introduced to place restrictions on six phthalates.

At the age of 31, in the June 2004 federal election, Cullen was elected to his first term as a Member of Parliament. He had won the NDP nomination in the Skeena—Bulkley Valley riding three months earlier against a Prince Rupert social worker. In the general election, he challenged the Conservative incumbent Andy Burton, Liberal Miles Richardson who was chair of the B.C. Treaty Commission, Rod Taylor of the Christian Heritage Party, engineer and photographer Roger Benham of the Green Party and Marxist-Leninist Frank Martin. The election was seen as a tight three-way race between Burton, Richardson, and Cullen. Cullen made support of the federal moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling part of his campaign and a magnitude 6.7 earthquake off the Queen Charlotte Islands during the campaign helped highlight Cullen's arguments. Cullen went on to defeat the Conservative incumbent Burton by a margin of 1,272 votes. Cullen was the youngest of 19 New Democratic Party candidates elected to the 38th Parliament, a minority parliament led by Paul Martin and the Liberal Party.

By the end of 2004, he got engaged to his girlfriend, Diana Dahr, who was studying at a teacher's college, and he was voted "Favourite Up-and-Comer Rookie Politician" by fellow Members of Parliament. He was also awarded the US Ambassador's Award as one of only two Canadian recipients. In the first half of 2005, Cullen toured western provinces with other MPs to promote a private member's bill (Bill C-261) which would lower the voting age to 16. In February he made a motion in the House of Commons to "recognize the public health impacts of smog" and require improved emission standards of light duty vehicles sold in Canada, though it was not supported by the Liberal Party or Conservative Party. In summer 2005 Cullen co-sponsored, along with several credit unions, a series of Youth Entrepreneur Awards within the Skeena/Stikine/Bulkley Valley to recognize local young persons' entrepreneurial achievements. In the fall, Cullen challenged the Minister of the Environment Stéphane Dion to take a blood test to illustrate the level of toxins present in the environment. He also spent time lobbying the Liberal government to publicly disclose the bids for Ridley Terminal; the proposed sale of the Prince Rupert Port Authority coal loading terminals by the federal government to a private firm was criticized by opposition parties as undervaluing the facility and likely to restrict fair access by competing coal companies (the sale was blocked by the Conservative Party after they won the subsequent election).

Nathan Cullen and Diana Dahr met in Smithers through their work with Katimavik and by the end of 2004, they were engaged.

Born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Cullen worked in several countries in Central and South America, during the 1990s, on community economic development projects. He moved to Smithers, British Columbia in 1998 and started a private consulting business focussed on strategic planning and conflict resolution. While working in Latin America, Cullen learned Spanish and named his company Maravilla Consultants after the town (the Spanish word for wonder) in Costa Rica in which he worked. He has lived in Smithers since 1998.

Nathan Cullen (born July 13, 1972) is a Canadian federal politician who was the Member of Parliament for the riding of Skeena—Bulkley Valley from the 2004 federal election until 2019. A member of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Cullen was re-elected in 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2015, allowing him to serve in the 38th, 39th, 40th, 41st, and 42nd Parliaments. Cullen was a candidate in the 2012 New Democratic Party leadership election, and came in third. During the 41st Parliament, Cullen was the House Leader for the Official Opposition and then Finance critic in Thomas Mulcair's Shadow Cabinet. He was the NDP critic for Democratic Reform as well as Ethics, and deputy critic for Finance in the 42nd Parliament.