Out of the PM's office, he demanded a cut for using his government contacts. Guilty.

Bruce Carson worked in the Office of the Prime Minister from 2006 to 2008, and briefly in 2009, as a senior adviser. The Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court both record the post.

On 24 July 2008, while still in the Prime Minister's Office, he accepted the job of executive director of the Canada School of Energy and Environment, a collaboration of Alberta's research universities, the University of Calgary among them. The University of Calgary reported lobbying him in the office on education on 2 and 4 September 2008. Others reported lobbying him there that summer: Shell on the environment on 11 July, Petro-Canada on energy on 16 July and on 5 and 15 August, and Hoffmann-La Roche on procurement and health on 28 July. The filings record who met and the subject, not what was said. The Globe and Mail reported he left the office in August 2008; the university's filings list him there in September. The two records do not agree.

He then ran the Canada School of Energy and Environment. In April 2010 he told a Senate committee that the school "was set up in the 2007 budget" as a centre of excellence, and that he took it over "full time after the 2009 budget".

Exhibit 6

Harper asked him back for a month in January 2009, the Globe reported from the letters the Prime Minister's Office later released. On 13 January Harper's chief of staff, Guy Giorno, set up a screen to keep him out of matters touching the school, the University of Calgary and the Networks of Centres of Excellence program, and stopped his work on the 2009 budget. On 6 January the Natural Resources Department received an email from him "seeking funding for an initiative backed by his other employer, the school". His explanation, in Giorno's letter: it was drafted before he returned "but apparently was mistakenly not sent until after his return to the PMO". "The school recalled the e-mail." Giorno wrote that at the budget meetings he attended, "no matters related to his work at the school were raised." The letters stayed private until April 2011. He left the Prime Minister's employ on 4 February 2009, the Court of Appeal later found, and began work at the school after that date.

The year following his departure from the Prime Minister's Office, he negotiated a contract with "H2O Professionals Inc. (H2O)", in Justice Simmons's words "a company that marketed and sold point-of-use water treatment systems and water softener systems". Commissions would be paid to his then girlfriend on every sale of the systems to First Nations, "regardless of whether the First Nations or the Government of Canada paid for the systems." The Supreme Court's words for his side of it: he "demanded this commission in exchange for promising to use his government contacts to help H2O sell its products to First Nations."

Then he used them. He communicated with First Nations leaders, government officials at Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, and cabinet ministers and their staff about H2O's products. "INAC advised him that it provided funding to First Nations that could be used towards purchasing point-of-use water systems," the Supreme Court found, though "First Nations had full autonomy in determining how to allocate this funding." "That said, INAC sometimes participated in and funded pilot projects for water treatment systems." He "sought to convince INAC to set up a project whereby it would fund the purchase of H2O's products to pilot them in First Nations communities."

Exhibit 7

The trial judge's findings show how. On 6 August 2010 he emailed H2O's owners: "I spoke with the PM last nite and with Atleo- the movement of John Duncan to INAC does not slow anything down." That is his claim in an email; the court made no finding that the call took place. Department officials who met him and H2O that autumn told them point-of-use systems "would be purchased by First Nations communities". On 16 September 2010 he wrote to the Assembly of First Nations' chief executive that "the govt has decided to fund the systems". The AFN's water specialist told him the AFN "does not endorse any product". He asked H2O to buy a table at the AFN's Christmas dinner; the money was paid to him, and he gave it to his then girlfriend. "The AFN was never paid." In May 2011, after the Canadian Press reported that John Duncan's aides had met Carson in January, Duncan's spokeswoman said: "they met him once, and nothing was untowards". The trial judge found that between January and March 2011 he met Duncan, then Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, and Peter Kent, then Minister of the Environment, with their staff, "to discuss the means by which H2O's water treatment systems could be funded". Neither the trial reasons, 2017 ONCA 142, 2018 SCC 12 nor the Ethics Commissioner's report finds what either minister knew of the commission.

That is the pattern: a commission to his then girlfriend, the Government of Canada named as a possible payer, and a push for the department to fund his client's product.

Exhibit 8

In March 2011 his old office referred him. On 12 March Harper's chief of staff, Ray Novak, wrote to the Ethics Commissioner on the Prime Minister's behalf asking for an examination of Carson's conduct. A second request, from Dimitri Soudas, the office's director of communications, on 22 March, said his emails with the department "appeared to show that Mr. Carson was trying to use his influence to have federal funding approved". That day Harper told the House: "There is nothing to indicate that a government contract or government money is implicated in this affair." John Baird said the government had referred the matter "not just to the RCMP and to the Ethics Commissioner but also to the Commissioner of Lobbying." The trial judge later found there "simply was no government business"; the Court of Appeal set the acquittal aside, and the Supreme Court upheld the conviction. The ethics examination opened on 1 April 2011 and was suspended on 14 November 2011 for the RCMP's criminal investigation. Commissioner Mario Dion closed it in June 2018 without a finding, "especially given the guilty verdict".

Exhibit 9

He was charged with a fraud against the government under section 121(1)(d) of the Criminal Code, the influence peddling offence. At trial, the Supreme Court records, he admitted he was a person with influence with the government, and that he demanded a benefit for his then girlfriend in exchange for using his contacts for H2O. His defence was that this was not connected to "any matter of business relating to the government", because First Nations, not the department, decided whether to buy. The trial judge, Justice Warkentin of the Ontario Superior Court, agreed, and acquitted him in 2015.

The Crown appealed. On 17 February 2017 the Court of Appeal for Ontario held that the trial judge had read the offence too narrowly, entered a verdict of guilty and sent the case back for sentencing. Justice Simmons dissented: "I do not agree that the trial judge misinterpreted s. 121(1)(d) or that she made any other error of law."

On 23 March 2018 the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed his appeal, with Justice Côté dissenting. Justice Karakatsanis wrote that the department "could have facilitated these purchases, for example, by changing its funding terms and conditions to H2O's benefit," and that "Mr. Carson tried to convince the government to create a pilot project to promote H2O's products." Her conclusion: by demanding a benefit in exchange for his promise of influence, "Mr. Carson undermined the appearance of government integrity."

Justice Côté dissented. In her view the business had to relate to the government in fact, and here it did not.

Exhibit 10

The majority's reasons are now the law. In the Court's words, a matter of business relates to the government "if it depends on or could be facilitated by the government, given its mandate." The trial judge had found First Nations could buy such systems "without INAC's approval". The conviction stands all the same.

His second case was under the Lobbying Act. Leaving the Prime Minister's employ on 4 February 2009 put him under a five-year ban, to 4 February 2014. The school he now ran had a $15.0M grant from Industry Canada, agreed on 7 March 2007 while he was still in the Prime Minister's Office; the court found he had no part in that award. If no agreement on the unspent money was reached by 31 March 2010, the uncommitted part "shall be returned" to the Minister; the school could also, with the Minister, decide its best use. In early 2009 an Industry Canada director general contacted him: about $12.2M was uncommitted and unlikely to be committed in time. Over the following months he communicated with officials about changing the agreement, and on 13 January 2010 an amendment set 31 March 2014 as the date to commit the rest.

Exhibit 11

He was charged on 7 May 2014 with three offences: undertaking, for payment, to communicate with officials on behalf of the Energy Policy Institute of Canada about government policy; arranging, for payment, a meeting between officials and its members; and communicating, as the school's employee, about a federal grant. Justice Catherine Kehoe of the Ontario Court of Justice convicted him on all three on 16 September 2016, and that November fined him $50,000 in all. She found that, as a result of his communications, the money "did not have to be returned to the Minister", and that it "would have been forfeited" without them.

On appeal in 2017, Justice Calum MacLeod of the Superior Court of Justice set aside the grant count: answering officials' questions about a grant already awarded "is not clearly engaging in" communication on the award of one, he held. On 15 May 2019 the Court of Appeal for Ontario reinstated it: "A person may carry on a communication whether the person is the instigator of the conversation or the recipient of it." The extension, the court held, "constituted the award of a financial benefit every bit as much as the initial award of the funds did."

Exhibit 12

His case was never that the deal didn't happen. At trial, in the Supreme Court's words, he "took the position that his assistance was not 'in connection with a matter of business relating to the government'", because First Nations, not Ottawa, decided whether to buy water systems. In the Supreme Court he submitted that the trial judge correctly interpreted the offence to exclude matters in which the government has no direct interest. The trial judge agreed with him and acquitted him. Justice Simmons, dissenting in the Court of Appeal, found no error of law in that acquittal. Justice Côté, dissenting in the Supreme Court, held the business had to relate to the government in fact: "In my view, he did not."

Exhibit 13

His old office's side, in its own words. On 22 March 2011 the Prime Minister told the House: "There is nothing to indicate that a government contract or government money is implicated in this affair." His office had already asked the Ethics Commissioner to examine Carson, by Ray Novak's letter of 12 March; Dimitri Soudas's request of 22 March said the emails "appeared to show that Mr. Carson was trying to use his influence to have federal funding approved". The trial judge accepted that there "simply was no government business". The Court of Appeal reversed her, and the Supreme Court upheld the conviction: business relates to the government "if it depends on or could be facilitated by the government, given its mandate." Guy Giorno wrote that at the budget meetings he attended, "no matters related to his work at the school were raised." In the second case, the appeal judge set aside the grant count partly because Industry Canada began the talks and its officials did not consider his conduct lobbying. The Court of Appeal held that neither point mattered under the Act.

Exhibit 14

Our read: the department did not have to approve a purchase to shape it. The Supreme Court's test is whether the business "depends on or could be facilitated by the government, given its mandate". It found the department "could have facilitated these purchases, for example, by changing its funding terms and conditions to H2O's benefit", and that it "sometimes participated in and funded pilot projects". Carson sought to convince it to set up one for H2O. A promise to use government contacts for one vendor, in exchange for a commission, is what the offence forbids. The Supreme Court said so, with Justice Côté dissenting. The Lobbying Act case turned the same way: the Court of Appeal held a communication counts "whether the person is the instigator of the conversation or the recipient of it."