PM’S former adviser’s school spent $1.3M in salaries, costs
OTTAWA — A federally-funded research partnership that actively promoted oil and gas companies reported spending more than $1.3 million on salaries, office expenses and travel in 2011, coinciding with the departure of its executive director who is now in the middle of an ethics and lobbying controversy.
Bruce Carson, a former adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, headed the Alberta-based Canada School of Energy and Environment that promoted research collaborations between three universities in the province until he was prompted to leave because of unrelated allegations of inappropriate lobbying of the government on behalf of a company promoting water treatment technology and services.
The allegations, first raised in a 2011 report on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, have not been proven in court and Carson’s lawyer said last week that his client intended to “vigorously defend the charge” in court.
Carson had said in previous interviews that one of his goals at the school, which received a $15 million federal grant while he was an adviser in government, was to clean up the “dirty oil” image of Canada’s oilsands industry and provide the public with a more balanced view of its environmental performance.
Carson’s efforts coincided with the federal government forming a partnership with the Alberta government and industry stakeholders to engage in a sophisticated international lobbying and marketing campaign that continues to use Canadian diplomats to promote the oilsands and discourage governments in Europe and the United States from implementing legislation and policies to target the environmental footprint of the oilsands industry, considered by the government to be the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.
Published records from the school revealed that it spent $1.33 million in salaries and other related operating expenses during Carson’s last year on the job. The same items were budgeted to cost $484,000 for the 2013 fiscal year as the office “winds down” its activities.
Carson’s lawyer, Patrick McCann, didn’t respond to a request for comment on the organization’s records, but Robert Skinner, the school’s interim director, said the drop in operating expenses reflects the organization’s reduction from six employees down to only one full-time employee.
“In effect, we’re winding down the Canada School,” said Skinner, an energy consultant and former executive at Statoil Canada, in an interview on Tuesday.
Skinner noted that the school had awarded dozens of research grants for academic projects that also leveraged additional funding from other sources such as private companies. Skinner said this type of networking and partnerships would continue through other organizations, industrial stakeholders and universities in the context of an ongoing political debate about a national energy strategy in Canada.
When the school was first created by the universities of Alberta, Calgary, and Lethbridge, its original mandate was to promote research into sustainable energy and energy efficiency technologies.
But after leaving the prime minister’s office in 2008 to become the school’s first executive director, Carson changed its mandate to allow it to do advocacy work on energy and climate change policies. He also continued to do work for the Harper government and former environment minister Jim Prentice in 2009 in the new role, which required him to meet regularly with governments and executives from the oil and gas industry.
The school’s published records revealed that Carson earned $139,203 in salary, benefits, relocation and accommodation allowances during his first few months on the job in the 2008-2009 fiscal year.
Overall, the 2011 spending included $760,485 in salaries and benefits, $64,905 in office operating expenses, $114,533 in travel, $167,714 in “professional services” and $159,414 in “conferences/knowledge dissemination,” the school reported.
The school’s chairman, Robert Turner, revealed last October that it had lost about $15,000 in travelrelated expenses charged on Carson’s credit card that it deemed “weren’t appropriate for the school to pay.”
Last week, Carson made headlines again as the RCMP announced that he has been charged with influence-peddling. The Mounties allege he accepted a commission for a third party in connection with a business matter relating to the government.