HALIFAX—Elizabeth May had to leave Nova Scotia to win a Green seat at parliament, but she’s confident the political landscape is different in 2019. Little more than a week out from the election, she’s counting on the Greens to make a breakthrough in the Maritimes.

“Things have changed dramatically from then until now,” May said in an interview, referring to her 2008 bid in a Nova Scotia riding.

She lost that race, but three years later, on the opposite coast, she would win in the riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands — the B.C. seat where she’s a candidate again in 2019.

The Green party leader still believes she could have won in the riding of Central Nova in 2008 had she spent more time campaigning locally (she said party strategists encouraged her to focus the Green campaign on Guelph, where they thought the party had a good chance), but she came second to the Conservative incumbent — Stephen Harper cabinet minister, Peter MacKay.

“Our fortunes in Nova Scotia have changed a lot,” said May.

Nova Scotia has never had a Green member of parliament, nor has any other Atlantic province, and the polls are predicting the party will gain one or no seats across the entire region on Oct. 21. But May said she doesn’t take the polls as “gospel.” Based on what Green candidates and volunteers are hearing on the ground, she sees “breakthrough possibilities.”

That’s why the Green leader made a two-day sweep through the Maritimes on Friday and Saturday, closing it out with a stop in Halifax Saturday evening. In the city’s west end, May visited a supporter’s house with Halifax Green candidate and deputy party leader Jo-Ann Roberts, where together they put out a lawn sign.

May said she lived a few blocks away when she was a law student at Dalhousie University. She’s not a stranger to Nova Scotia, having moved to Cape Breton from the U.S. with her family as a teenager. In addition to earning her law degree, she also started her career of environmental activism in Nova Scotia, volunteering for a campaign against the spraying of pesticides.

“Voters know I care about the Maritimes. They know I know Maritimes issues,” May said in a car, driving between the lawn sign installation and a rally for a few dozen supporters at a nearby café.

That’s part of the reason why she believes Green votes will be fruitful this year in Nova Scotia.

Her deputy leader has a similar election history to May’s, having run on both coasts of the country.

Jo-Ann Roberts ran in Victoria in the 2015 election and — like May in Central Nova — came second. Unlike May, she didn’t move across the country shopping for a friendly riding. She said she came back to the Maritimes to be close to family, with no intention of running again.

“I did feel that a lot of the things I’d been fighting for I’d hoped the Liberal government would deal with,” Roberts said.

But then “she watched the promises be broken,” and watched climate issues grow and changed her mind.

“At some point you go, ‘OK, it may not be about that I want to do this, but I’ve got to do this.’”

Roberts said she probably could have picked an easier seat elsewhere in Nova Scotia. She’s running against Liberal incumbent Andy Fillmore in a riding that had a popular NDP MP, Megan Leslie, before the Liberals swept the province in 2015.

“But I wanted to be here,” Roberts said. “This is where my family is — and it isn’t just about winning, it’s about representing where you feel you’re rooted.”

Running and acting as deputy leader, she said, is also an exercise in building the Green party brand in the region.

When Roberts and May joined other federal Green candidates and a few dozen Green supporters for a Saturday evening rally, Roberts told the crowd that her party was being “underestimated” in this campaign.

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With little more than a week left before election day, both women urged the crowd to double down on their campaign efforts.

May said getting more Green candidates in parliament was the only way “to arrest the climate disaster before it becomes a global catastrophe.” She compared campaign efforts to donating a kidney to a best friend.

“This is that kind of moment. I’m asking of you to do more than you thought you were going to do the next few days.”

Asked what it would mean for the Green party if they didn’t make gains this election, May said that was simply “not plausible.”

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