A former New Democrat MP from Quebec is joining the Green party, Green Leader Elizabeth May said Sunday.

May announced in Montreal that Jose Nunez-Melo will run under the Green banner in the new suburban Montreal riding of Vimy.

Nunez-Melo was elected to the House of Commons in 2011 as part of the orange wave that swept Quebec.

"I am over the moon to welcome Jose Nunez-Melo who has served in Parliament, as I have since 2011," May said.

"We weren't in the same party but we had the same spirit."

La Presse reported this month that Nunez-Melo became embroiled in a dispute with the party over the nomination in the new riding, and quoted him as saying he was blocked from running by party brass.

Nunez-Melo, who came to Canada in 1990 from the Dominican Republic, is one of only a handful of Hispanic Canadians who have sat in the House of Commons.

Nunez-Melo said he wanted to run again in the newly drawn riding, but the NDP party brass prevented hum from doing so.

He said the party wanted to open the nominations even though he's an incumbent, so he decided to join the Green Party.

Leader Elizabeth May and other party candidates welcomed him to the fold at the Montreal offices Sunday where he made it official.

He praised the party as a truly democratic one, and told media the NDP had changed a lot since the Jack Layton's death - and  was no longer open.

"I never had any problems with them, but I noticed they were blocking some things," he said. "I didn't have much participation in Question Period. Even though the media says I was silent, but I wasn't silent because I want to but they were working things that way."

May says the Greens now have three members who were MPs in the last Parliament, one more than the Bloc Quebecois at dissolution, and is pushing for inclusion in all debates.

As for his defection, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair said it came down to the fact that Nunez-Melo didn't want to follow the party's rules.

"You have to look at the letter he sent. He sent a letter saying he didn't accept the rules of the party and the party said, 'Fine, you're not a candidate and if you don't accept the rules, you can't be a candidate,'" said Mulcair.

This defection doesn't necessarily mean there's bad blood between the two parties, however. In fact, May told the news conference Sunday that she is hopeful the NDP or Liberals will form a minority government so that they can work together on environmental policies and defeat Stephen Harper.

With a report from CTV Montreal