BUSTED!! Oil Sands Flogger Bruce Carson Foun

[Oscar]

Remember the Bruce Carson Scandal?

Few stories illustrate the abuse of power in Canadian politics and its dirty relationship with Big Oil better than the Bruce Carson scandal. The senior Harper aide left Ottawa in 2008 to run a university think tank which he turned into a clearinghouse for oil sands strategy and propaganda. Taxpayers paid millions for it all.

I've been following the story since 2011, and it challenges the very definition of Canadian politics as clean and boring. This month an Ontario judge found Carson guilty of three counts of illegal lobbying on behalf of the Canadian School of Energy and Environment and a shadowy industrial lobby, the Energy Policy Institute of Canada. He is the second individual found guilty after trial under the weak and little used 2008 Lobbying Act. Not surprisingly, the mainstream media ignored the story.

Read my latest below . . . Andrew Nikiforuk

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Crash of ‘The Mechanic’: Oil Sands Flogger Bruce Carson Found Guilty

[ http://thetyee.ca/News/2016/09/21/Bruce ... nd-Guilty/ ]

Harper insider convicted on three counts of illegal lobbying.

By Andrew Nikiforuk , Today | TheTyee.ca

Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about the energy industry for two decades and is a contributing editor to The Tyee. Find his previous stories here.

Bruce Carson: Tyee’s 2011 investigation of the political fixer called ‘The Mechanic’ detailed roles and activities a judge this week deemed illegal.

Bruce Carson, a senior advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper from 2006 to 2009, has been convicted on three different counts of illegal lobbying.

Carson broke the law while pushing Harper’s fossil fuels friendly agenda from two perches. One was an oil lobby group, and the other was a federally funded think tank at the University of Calgary billed as a clean energy research centre before Carson helped bend it to oil sands advocacy.

Under Canada’s weak and little used Lobbying Act, it is illegal for public office holders to communicate or influence other public office holders for at least five years after they have left office. The act also requires anyone being paid to influence decision-makers to register their activities.

In a lengthy 97-page decision, Justice Catherine Kehoe found that the Harper aide broke the law by repeatedly communicating with public office holders for payment about oil sands issues during the five-year prohibition period. Despite warnings, Carson never bothered to register as a paid lobbyist either.

Kehoe found that Carson willfully broke the law between 2009 and 2011 while serving as director of the now-defunct Canadian School of Energy and Environment (CSEE) at the University of Calgary and while acting as co-chair of industry funded Energy Policy Institute of Canada (EPIC).

A 2011 Tyee investigation found that Carson used both organizations as part of a coordinated industry and government effort by the Harper administration to rebrand the oil sands megaproject as a “responsible,” “sustainable,” and “clean.”

Kehoe specifically found Carson guilty of renegotiating a $12-million contract with Industry Canada for the federally funded Canadian School of Energy and Environment while he served as director of the think tank.

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[ http://thetyee.ca/News/2016/09/21/Bruce ... nd-Guilty/ ]