was eliminated on the first ballot. Since first being elected in 2008, Ashton was elected as the Chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women in the 40th Parliament of Canada, as has served as the NDP Post-Secondary and Youth critic, as the Rural and Community Development critic and from 2012 to 2014 as the Status of Women Critic. On January 23, 2015, Ashton was appointed as the Aboriginal Affairs Critic in Canada's Official Opposition. After the 2015 federal election, Ashton was appointed the NDP critic for Jobs, Employment and Workforce Development in the 42nd Canadian Parliament. Ashton announced her candidacy for the 2017 NDP leadership election on March 7, 2017. She placed third in the October 1, 2017 election, with 17.4% of the vote, just over 1,000 votes behind runner up Charlie Angus. Jagmeet Singh was elected leader on the first ballot. Ashton was re-elected in the 2019 federal election. She was stripped of her critic roles on January 1, 2021 after revealing to the public on Twitter that she had travelled to Greece during the 2020 COVID-19 second wave to visit an "ailing grandmother." She had not informed party leadership of her travel plans beforehand. She was re-elected in the 2021 federal election. Political views Domestic policy During the 2017 New Democratic Party leadership election Ashton ran on a platform including: A focus on plans to create and maintain good-paying jobs for young people and working Canadians, and tackle the threat of climate change. A commitment to providing tuition-free post-secondary education. Advocating combatting the unequal distribution of wealth, the loss of value-added jobs, the "foreign ownership and trade deals that are selling us out". Niki Ashton criticizes the Canada Infrastructure Bank for only funding public-private partnerships, and for its failure to complete any of its projects after four years of existence. In February 2022, Ashton introduced a bill to rewrite its mandate focus on projects that tackle the impacts of climate change, and to fund publicly-owned infrastructure instead of trying to implicate private finance. Foreign policy During the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis Ashton tweeted the following: "PM Trudeau sides with [U.S. President Donald] Trump's regime change agenda and Brazil's fascist President in support of someone calling for a military coup in Venezuela," Ashton said on Twitter. "No! We cannot support an agenda of economic or military coups. #HandsOffVenezuela." Ashton has been a critic