In fact, the Bruce Carson affair is a much darker tale about the character of the Harper government and its abuse of the public trust.
And it goes like this: Harper's key political troubleshooter and problem fixer gets lobbied for money for a new university think tank.
He then leaves the Prime Minister's Office and becomes executive director of that same think tank: the Canada School of Energy and the Environment.
It's mostly funded by a $15-million grant from the Harper government.
The former senior advisor alters the school's mandate to permit government lobbying and policy development on the oil sands.
He then lobbies for more federal money, $25 million, and gets it.
He also works for several of his former associates (three cabinet ministers) and directs a joint industry and government campaign to improve the image of the oil sands industry.
CARSON AND HIS FIANCÉE
Most Canadians first heard of Bruce Carson in March when news broke that a 66-year-old disbarred lawyer and convicted fraudster was under investigation by the RCMP for influence peddling on behalf a Michelle McPherson, his 22-year-old fiancée and a former one-time Ottawa sex worker.
That aspect of Carson's busy life was revealed first by the Aboriginal People's Television Network, which received documents allegedly proving that Carson actively lobbied the federal government on behalf of Michelle McPherson and her new employer, a water filtration company.
McPherson, whose mother works for interests in the gas kingdom of Qatar, was trying to sell water filters to aboriginal reserves where poor water quality remains a legacy of both Liberal and Tory government neglect.
Federal law also prohibits former political staffers from lobbying government for five years after leaving office or from taking improper advantage of their previous position.
Yet there are several loopholes: if individuals spend less than 20 per cent of their time lobbying, lobby for free or are paid by a corporation, they don't have to register their activity. Carson has never registered as a lobbyist.
Lobbying commissioner Karen Shepherd has been asked by at least one MP to investigate the Carson affair and alleged breaches of the Lobbying Act. -- A.N.
With taxpayer dollars he openly runs a partisan Tory energy think tank. He even gives partisan Tory speeches to Tory audiences.
In the end, the school becomes a clearinghouse for industrial energy lobbyists working hand in hand with the federal and Alberta Tory government.
In sum, the PMO's senior advisor appears to have never surrendered his previous political files or his role as a Harper's troubleshooter.
And then the Aboriginal People's Television Network (APTN) runs a sexy story about Carson's fiancée and polluted water and influence peddling (see sidebar).
*But big ethical questions about Harper's role in the larger scandal remain unanswered, including these:
To what degree was Harper or members of his office involved in setting up Carson with a comfortable university job entirely funded by taxpayers' dollars?
Why did the Harper government not begin a conflict-of-interest investigation two years ago when his close friend lobbied the government for more money?
And why was a former government staffer allowed to take advantage of his former high profile position and freely mix and mingle with government officials and cabinet ministers within a year of his leaving office and before "the cooling off" period had ended?
Today The Tyee learned that the conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, Mary Dawson, has commenced an investigation of Carson under the Conflict of Interest Act. In addition to an RCMP investigation, that makes three separate federal inquiries on the activities of Harper's former advisor and confidant. The latest one focuses on matters revealed in this story -- the highly questionable way Carson came to head the Canada School of Energy and the Environment and how he apparently violated ethics rules by actively working with government officials during a so-called "cooling off period."
While various aspects of Carson's dealings have emerged over past weeks in bits and pieces, this in-depth report includes fresh information and perspectives. What surfaces is a tale of industry and government duplicity, conflict of interest, arrogance, breach of public trust, and systemic ethical lapses in the Conservative government.
Carson, concludes Duff Conacher, director of Democracy Watch, is a figure of rich, if oil black, irony. "He exploited the whole political cronyism system that Harper originally attacked and disparaged before forming a government."
A mechanic on campus
Carson, a disbarred lawyer who looks like a pugilist, often described himself as "mechanic," a political fixer who got things done in the messy corridors of power.
As senior policy advisor to Primer Minister Stephen Harper, he oversaw the government's most difficult and contentious files, including climate change, the oil sands and the war in Afghanistan. Associates alternately describe the well-known political fixer as charismatic, paranoid and competent.
"Carson really had the skills of an old political boss. He was the guy who made things happen under the radar and the guy who knows everything," says a former university associate.
According to annual reports for the Canada School of Energy and Environment (CSEE) and Carson's own speeches (many of which have disappeared from the web), the federal government conveniently set aside $15 million for a university think tank dedicated to smart energy research in 2007. It did so after then University of Calgary president Harvey Weingarten and climate change scientist David Keith pitched the idea for an innovative energy think tank directly to Harper's senior policy advisor -- Bruce Carson. (At the time, Carson had been seconded from the PMO to Environment Canada to help put out political fires started by then environment minister Rona Ambrose, a climate change skeptic.)
"Harvey and I went to Ottawa to lobby for the CSEE funding, and you can guess who the key guy to talk to was. It's hard to escape the conclusion that Carson was building himself a soft landing from government," Keith told The Tyee.
A year later, Carson left the Prime Minister's Office. After allegedly conducting an international recruitment search, the University of Calgary appointed Carson as executive director of the school in August 2008. Months later he took two separate leaves of absence to help with the federal election campaign and another to work in the PMO during the so-called prorogation crisis in 2009.
Yet Carson's appointment seemed odd. He was a constitutional expert with no academic credentials in energy or the environment. But he did, however, have a checkered legal career and lengthy criminal record including five convictions in total. When the Calgary Herald asked questions about Carson's criminal record in 2008, a University of Calgary spokesperson refused to talk about "second or third hand information."
Bruce Carson Scandal Greased by Harper's Oil Sands Agenda Page 3 of 4
Harper's Crime Floggers The case of the Macdonald Laurier Institute, key accomplice to Tories in their assaults on truth.
Conacher, however, says there is no such thing as an ethics screen under the Conflict of Interest Act. "I think what he (Carson) was doing was illegal." Gerard Kennedy, a Liberal MP and environment critic, has called for a full investigation: "Every Canadian knows this is a conflict of interest."
Shortly afterwards, the Tory politico eventually secured a total of $50 million in taxpayer dollars for the carbon group from Natural Resources Canada and the government of Alberta. Carson then chaired the group until the McPherson lobbying scandal broke.
Meanwhile Carson also worked on the same files that preoccupied the mechanic while serving as senior policy advisor to the prime minister.
In April 28, 2009, for example, Carson accompanied Environment Minister Jim Prentice at the first preparatory meeting of the Major Economies Forum (MEF) on Energy in Washington, D.C. The MEF is composed of the world's 16 worst greenhouse gas polluters. (Canada ranks in the top 10.) Carson was the only non-government employee there. He also attended later MEF meetings.
In fact, Carson showed up by Prentice's side routinely. "I'd arrange a meeting with Prentice and Bruce Carson would always be there," says a senior Carson associate who cannot be named. "I don't know in what capacity. But he was continually working for Prentice. Carson never left his previous role."
Towards the end of his so-called cooling off period, Carson's school also partnered with Natural Resources Canada and Minister Lisa Raitt to hold a roundtable on clean energy research and development in November 2009.
Environment Canada webpage shows Environment Minister Jim Prentice next to Bruce Carson at high-level meeting with U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu in April of 2009, just eight months after Carson left government, despite required one-year "cooling off period."
Contrary to popular definitions of "clean energy," companies representing wind, solar and geothermal developments weren't invited to the roundtable. In fact, the Carson agenda was clearly dominated by oil-sand producers including Shell, Imperial, EnCana, Nexen and Enbridge as well as Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
The roundtable concluded that "the fossil fuel industry in Canada suffers from reputational challenges due to poor communication." And that "energy literacy among the Canadian public is very low." It also noted that: "Governments must create a policy environment that is supportive of R&D in fossil fuels." The school later hosted Christian Paradis, minister of natural resources, for a dinner to discuss "a national clean energy strategy for Canada."
'A blanket rule'
To recap, then, the Carson saga up to this point:
Under the guise of a non-profit education and research facility, Carson, Stephen Harper's former chief policy advisor, used millions of taxpayer dollars to actively champion fossil fuels as "clean energy," deflect criticism on the extreme carbon and environmental footprint of the oil sands, and advocate for an industry-designed "Pan Canadian energy policy."
At the same time, the manically busy Carson accompanied Environment Minister Jim Prentice on sensitive bilateral meetings and advised two natural resource ministers, including Lisa Raitt and current minister Christian Paradis, on so-called "clean energy" matters.
As the coach of a concerted industry and government oil-sands campaign, Carson also advised oil sands executives on how to clean up the industry's "dirty oil" brand.
But under the federal Conflict of Interest Act, a former government officials must undergo a one-year "cooling-off" period that strictly forbids them from communicating with their former political masters.
Although Bruce Carson was clearly required by the Conflict of Interest Act to inform ethics commissioner Mary Dawson that he had communicated and worked with three different cabinet ministers during his "cooling off" period, it's not clear he did so.
"The one year cooling off period is a blanket rule," says Conacher of Democracy Watch, a non-partisan watchdog that has doggedly criticized Liberal patronage scandals. "It appears that Carson wasn't careful enough and crossed the line as we can see from other aspects of his life. He exploited the whole political cronyism system that Harper originally attacked and disparaged before forming a government."
As noted at the top of this story, ethics commissioner Mary Dawson today let it be known that she has launched an investigation of Carson -- a probe begun by request of the Prime Minister's Office.
Ex-prostitute pal ran oil sands confabs
Towards the end of 2009, Carson organized a conference dedicated to another of his PMO responsibilities, the US/Canada Clean Energy Dialogue. He also attended the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference "in the capacity of Senior Advisor to the Deputy Minister of the Environment." The school's 2009 corporate plan also says that Carson coordinated "a team of special advisors" for the environment minister.
In April 2010, Carson's school sponsored a clean energy "dialogue" in Banff that according to participants was "largely a platform for Environment Minister Jim Prentice." Carson even admitted such: "I thought, if we could bring together the right group of people for a few days, we could help our federal Environment Minister, Honorable Jim Prentice put flesh on the bones" of a proposed US/Canada Clean Energy Dialogue that to date has made no real progress on reducing GHG emissions.
Many of these conferences, such as the three-day Banff meeting, were hosted by Barbara Lynn Khan, a former prostitute from North Carolina. After being convicted of running a bawdy house ("the Sugar Shack") and money laundering in the United States, Kahn, the 45-year-old native of Ontario was deported to Canada in 2005. She met Carson in Ottawa in 2006. But Banff attendees simply knew the well-dressed woman as "Kat."
"Kat ran the conference for us and for free. She was marvelous. That woman is super competent," said one associate.
Shortly afterwards, Carson's relationship with Barbara Lynn Kahn ended. He then hooked up with a former Ottawa sex worker, 22-year-old Michelle McPherson.
"I've got a new girlfriend. She's real young. She's 28." Carson told friends. She's really something, a real go-getter."
In 2010 Carson actively coordinated a joint industry and government lobbying effort to improve the oil sands environmental image then the subject of international environmental and First Nations' campaigns.
According to documents obtained by Mike De Souza at Postmedia News, Carson sat down with David Collyer, president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) and the deputy minister of natural resources, Cassie J. Doyle (the same government official Carson lobbied for federal funding), as well as several Alberta deputy ministers at a March meeting of the "Alberta Government On Oil Sands Outreach and Communications." It was held at CAPP's headquarters. Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner later joined the meeting.
The subject was a new industry strategy for oil sands executives on "upping their game" on the embattled project and its growing carbon and environmental liabilities. One deputy minister noted that "industry needs to pay now or pay later in other ways if the issue is not addressed."
Polishing the oil sands pitch
After the meeting, which concluded that industry and the federal and provincial governments should work together on CAPP's lobbying effort, the industry group contracted Carson's school to work on the Oil Sands Dialogues.
Carson then prepared a background paper (Engaging Canadians: National Oil Sands Dialogues) for the private discussions that were to be led by oil sands CEO's. The paper proposed to "expand Canada's international reach in energy trade" and recommended that the United States should resist attempts "to use US environmental regulations to block permitting of oil sands-related pipelines or refineries on climate grounds."
Incredibly, Carson's narrow paper makes no mention of some of the project's social, fiscal or national implications other than jobs. Carson, for example, doesn't address low royalty and tax rates, which even the US Council On Foreign Relations, a non-partisan think tank, noted in its 2009 oil sands report.