HALIFAX—A restaurateur and past mayoral hopeful is making a bid for federal politics with the Green Party in a Halifax-area riding.

Lil MacPherson announced Friday she would go up against the Liberal party incumbent, Darren Fisher, in Dartmouth-Cole Harbour in the 2019 election.

Nova Scotia has never had a Green Party MP, but MacPherson said she thinks it’s time for that to change.

“The Greens are coming,” she said in an interview.

MacPherson is the owner of the Wooden Monkey restaurants in downtown Halifax and Dartmouth, and is an outspoken environmentalist, promoting sustainable agricultural practices through her business operations. This will be her second political run after an unsuccessful mayoral campaign in 2016.

She told StarMetro she felt compelled to run for federal office after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a grim 2018 report, which said rapid action needs to be taken to avoid disastrous global temperature rise.

“It really hit me hard,” she said, adding that federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May asked her run soon after, and she “couldn’t say no to her.”

The Green Party candidate for Dartmouth-Cole Harbour came in fourth in the 2015 federal election, with 3.4 per cent of the vote. MacPherson said she’s “of course,” going for the win, but she would be happy by just making gains on the other major parties.

“I would like for the people to realize that the Greens are coming, the green movement is here, and it’s a good movement. To me, it’s the only move to go towards.”

Behind the Liberals, who won in Dartmouth-Cole Harbour with 58.2 per cent of the vote in 2015, the NDP came second with 24.4 per cent, followed by the Conservatives with 14 per cent.

According to the Conservative Party of Canada website, the party’s candidate for Dartmouth-Cole Harbour is Jason Cole, who also ran in 2015. The website describes him as a businessman, volunteer and pastor.

StarMetro asked the federal NDP by email if they had a candidate for the riding and they did not respond by deadline.

Along with the news of MacPherson’s candidacy, the Green Party of Canada announced three other Halifax-area candidates for the 2019 federal election.

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Thomas Trappenberg, the Leader of the Green Party of Nova Scotia and a professor of computer science at Dalhousie University, will run in the South Shore-St. Margaret’s riding; Halifax councillor Richard Zurawski will run in Halifax West; and Anthony Edmonds, an aerospace engineer, will run in Sackville-Preston-Chezzetcook.

Last year, the Green Party of Canada announced Jo-Ann Roberts as deputy leader of the party and as the candidate for the Halifax riding.

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