OTTAWA — Green Leader Elizabeth May says she offered to give up her job as the head of her party if Jody Wilson-Raybould had wanted to take it on.

May says she made the offer to the former justice minister in the first conversation the two had after Wilson-Raybould and former Treasury Board president Jane Philpott were ousted from the Liberal caucus last month.

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May says Wilson-Raybould declined the offer.

May says she would have stepped aside because Wilson-Raybould is impressive and May wants to elect the most Green MPs possible, though Wilson-Raybould would have had to win a leadership contest.

Both Philpott and Wilson-Raybould said today they will run in the next election as Independents but that they feel an affinity with the Green party, particularly on the issue of climate change.

Philpott says she hasn’t had enough time to decide if she wanted to join the Greens, where Wilson-Raybould says she is “not a party person” and didn’t want to join another party after leaving the Liberals.