Green party Leader Elizabeth May will run against Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay in his Nova Scotia riding in the next federal election, the CBC has learned.

May is expected to make her official announcement on Sunday in Antigonish, N.S.

Green party Leader Elizabeth May is aiming to become the first Green member voted to Parliament.
(CBC)

She is trying to become the first Green ever elected to Parliament.

The party received 4.5 per cent of the popular vote in the January 2006 election, and its candidate in MacKay's riding of Central Nova tallied less than two per cent of the vote.

Political observers say there could be an opportunity for a spring election depending on the reaction to Monday's federal budget.

There has been speculation in the last two or three weeks that the Greens have been talking to the Liberals on ways to unseat the Conservatives in Central Nova.

CBC parliamentary bureau chief Keith Boag said the Liberals he talked to are neither confirming nor denying the reports.

May, chosen party leader last August, moved to Cape Breton, N.S., when she was a teenager and later came to prominence as a young activist and lawyer in the early 1980s.

She now lives in Ottawa.