Before announcing her Green Party candidacy, former CBC radio host Jo-Ann Roberts met NDP incumbent Murray Rankin for lunch to tell him the news.

“He was disappointed, but he said that with a smile,” Roberts said.

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It was supposed to be the start of a friendly contest that over 75 days has devolved into anything but. No more lunch dates have been scheduled.

“We are still pretty civil to each other and we treat each other with respect, but it’s a little tenser than when it started,” Roberts said Wednesday.

That’s an understatement.

At the Green Party’s Victoria office Tuesday, beside a news release about poverty sat a magazine story about Rankin’s role as an administrative law and environmental law expert on behalf of Delaware-based company Bilcon. A North American Free Trade Agreement tribunal’s ruling this year could see the Canadian government have to pay more than $300 million to the American company because its proposed basalt quarry and ship-loading facility on the Bay of Fundy was rejected by a federal environmental review panel.

The Greens say Rankin’s role in the case shows he’s not the environmentalist he claims to be. Rankin, who beat the Green candidate by just 2.9 percentage points in the 2012 Victoria byelection, said he’s disappointed that this is where the Greens want to go in the dying days of a campaign.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, now the incumbent in Saanich-Gulf Islands, had fought against the quarry plan in her former role as Sierra Club executive director until 2006. Among other things, the quarry and terminal threatened the endangered right whale population.

Rankin, an international expert on environmental-assessment processes, was hired by international law firm Appleton & Associates to do an expert report.

That report, written before he was an MP, he said, concluded the environmental-assessment process was flawed.

“The government messed up the process … and I stand by that conclusion,” he said in an interview. “They changed the rules midstream; that’s unfair.”

In 2013, when he was an MP, he was called back before the NAFTA panel for cross-examination on his report. He was “compelled” to testify, he said.

May said Rankin took a case on behalf of an American company against Canada that could affect future decisions against this country. She said she’s shown “enormous forbearance” in not sending out news releases or talking about the issue unless asked — and only after the story was published.

“Murray Rankin as a sitting MP testified against Canada. Those are facts. That’s not nasty,” May said. “I wouldn’t have taken that case for $10 million. I would not have testified for a U.S. corporation to overturn a good result to defend the environment. What, did they put a gun to his head?

May said she’s known Rankin since 1982 and couldn’t believe he was the expert witness. “Testifying for Bilcon, there is no excuse,” May said in a Times Colonist editorial board meeting. “He’s damaged environmental law and environmental-assessment law permanently in this country and he’s undermined our sovereignty and he did it as a sitting MP.”

The questions are relevant given that the incumbent touts his environmental record, Roberts said. “The question here is his choice of client.”

Rankin said he’s disappointed the Green Party has chosen to focus on him. “I’ve been an environmental advocate my whole life. I’ve been saying the Conservatives have destroyed … our environmental-assessment process.” He’s said he’s fought for years to fix the process.

“I find it surprising coming from the party that says they want to do things differently that they would engage in a tactic like this,” Rankin said. “My focus is on stopping Stephen Harper and [on] the issues that matter to the people of Victoria, like child care, health care, climate change.”

The stakes in the Victoria race are high and nerves are frayed, said University of Victoria political scientist Michael Prince on Wednesday. Despite the digs over who is the “greenest” candidate, Prince maintains the victor is more likely to be determined by which camp gets its vote out.

ceharnett@timescolonist.com