Oil Sands Flogger Bruce Carson Fined $50,000 for Illegal Lobbying

Bruce Carson, a former senior adviser to prime minister Stephen Harper, was hit with a $50,000 fine this morning for illegal lobbying.

Carson is the first former designated public office holder to be convicted of breaching the Lobbying Act’s five-year ban on former public office holders using their connections to lobby after they’ve left office. He’s been given five years to pay the fine; Carson’s lawyer has said his client is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Two other people have been convicted of failing to register as a lobbyist, but Carson, who worked for Harper from 2006 to 2008, and again for a month in 2009, was the first to be captured by the sweeping five-year prohibition imposed by the Federal Accountability Act. It was a hallmark piece of legislation meant to herald a new era of accountability and transparency in the aftermath of the previous Liberal government’s sponsorship scandal

There’s a certain irony in the fact that Carson — who worked in the Prime Minister’s Office at the highest level when the FAA went through Parliament — should be the first person convicted under one of the act’s provisions a full 10 years later.

“It’s the first time it’s gone this far,” said W. Scott Thurlow, a lawyer and lobbyist. He said he isn’t surprised there’s been only one conviction under the five-year lobbying ban in a decade.

“There’s a very high burden of proof,” he said. “We’re talking about an exceptionally small pool of would-be criminals… You’re looking at a population of about 400 (former designated public office holders, such as former ministers, senior public servants and designated ministerial staff.)”

Once out of office, Carson lobbied for the energy and environment school he headed in Calgary as well as for EPIC, a think tank he co-chaired set up to develop a national energy policy from the viewpoint of the oil and gas industry.

In September, Ontario Court of Justice Judge Catherine Kehoe found Carson illegally communicated with “ministers and deputy ministers, the federal department of Natural Resources, Environment Canada, the PMO, the Clerk of the Privy Council as well as senior POHs (public office holders) in provincial and territorial governments.”

The Lobbying Act is set for a review in the winter session of Parliament. The legislation demands a second look at the act every five years.

Thurlow said he would like to see some changes. He argues that a former public officer such as Carson can be criminalized for lobbying on behalf of a non-profit organization — while the act allows the same kind of public office holder to spend up to 20 per cent of his or her time lobbying former associates as long as the work is for a private, for-profit company.

“I find it bizarre that a for-profit corporation would have an exemption where they could hire someone who could rely on their connections, but a non-profit corporation can’t,” Thurlow said.

Patrick Kennedy of the Goverment Relations Institute of Canada (GRIC), a group representing lobbyists, said he thinks the Lobbying Act doesn’t do enough to differentiate between powerful high-ranking political staffers (such as Carson) and junior employees who may be working for a politician for the first time.

“There are certainly questions about the efficacy of the rules where a chief of staff and a staffer are subject to the same type of ban,” he said in an interview.

“All ministerial exempt staff are considered designated public office holders whether you’re the 20-year old and it’s your first job out of school to do policy correspondence for the minister or whether you’re the DM (deputy minister) or chief of staff to the prime minister. All three are the same.”