Former aide to Harper sentenced to probation
Judge says Carson has suffered greatly since charge was laid seven years ago
A senior aide to former prime minister Stephen Harper, who entered the Conservative leader’s inner circle despite a criminal record for fraud, has been given a suspended sentence for influence peddling after his time in government.
Bruce Carson was handed the sentence in an Ottawa courtroom almost seven years after he was charged with committing a fraud on the government.
“I thought it was a pretty fair conclusion,” Carson said in an interview Monday.
Justice Bonnie Warkentin also imposed a one-year probation period and ordered Carson, 73, to perform 100 hours of community service.
In a copy of the decision released Monday, Warkentin said the sentence was intended to denounce Carson’s conduct while at the same time taking into consideration the personal price he has paid.
“He (Carson) has suffered a great deal as a result of the conduct in which he engaged that led to the charge against him,” the judge noted.
Court heard that Carson, once among the most powerful men in Ottawa, is now living in a basement apartment in Gatineau, where he exists on a modest pension that he supplements by writing a blog called The Morning Brief. The daily political newsletter has about 800 subscribers across the country.
“He has become effectively unemployable,” the judge said.
At the time the allegations surfaced, Carson was executive director of the Calgary-based Canada School of Energy and Environment, a university research organization, and chair of the Energy Policy Institute of Canada. He earned more than $400,000 a year from those jobs, court heard, but was fired from both in the scandal’s aftermath.
Carson said he doesn’t think about what he’s lost: “That would be pretty negative thinking, and I think that could drive you over the edge.
“It’s a slippery slope when you start falling,” Carson said. “You gotta keep getting up in the morning, and you gotta keep figuring out what you’re going to do.”
His seven-year legal odyssey, he said, has come with lessons and insights. “When I got into this,” Carson said, “(communications strategist) Jamie Watt said to me, ‘You won’t lose any friends: You’ll just find out who they are.’
“He was right: It has given me a tremendous opportunity to reconnect with friends and family over the seven-and-a-half years. I know I have a coterie of really good friends who have stood by me through all of this. I’ve also learned that you can continue to contribute to public policy even if there’s a bit of a cloud. And I’ve been able to do that.”
Now working on a book about his life in politics, the former Ottawa lawyer said he has also become more philosophical about his fall.
“I guess I’ve learned to appreciate things more than I did before. And I don’t take anything for granted,” he said.
The case began as an investigation by APTN reporters, who revealed in March 2011 that Carson was using his well-placed contacts to promote certain water-treatment systems for First Nations communities. His then-girlfriend, Michele McPherson, would be paid a sizable commission for every system sold to one
I’ve also learned that you can continue to contribute to public policy even if there’s a bit of a cloud.
of the country’s reserves.
The RCMP charged Carson with influence peddling in July 2012, but he was acquitted at his 2015 trial on the strength of his lawyer’s argument that it was Indigenous leaders — not government officials — who had the power to purchase the systems.
The case was appealed, and the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned Carson’s acquittal, saying the court had to take a broader view of what constituted government business. In March, the Supreme Court of Canada endorsed that conclusion in an 8-1 decision and remitted the case to Warkentin for sentencing.
Carson, who was disbarred as a lawyer in 1981 for defrauding several clients, was Harper’s chief policy analyst between 2006 and 2008.