Former Harper aide Carson says no one in PMO balked at his criminal past

Bruce Carson says no one raised a red flag about his criminal past when he joined Stephen Harper’s newly minted government as a top adviser.

The prime minister insisted Monday he would never have hired Carson had he known details now emerging about him.

But Carson said in an interview he mentioned his criminal history in early 2006 to Ian Brodie, then Harper’s chief of staff, when completing an application for a Secret-level security clearance.

And Carson says he hid nothing when filling out the extensive form.

“Certainly, my belief is that I listed all of the criminal offences to which I had been convicted. I had a discussion with Ian Brodie about this,” Carson told The Canadian Press.

“Because I didn’t want to fill the whole thing out and then catch anybody by surprise.”

The Canadian Press reported that Carson was convicted on five counts of fraud — three more than previously known — and received court-ordered psychiatric treatment before becoming one of Harper’s closest advisers.

Brodie said Monday he was not aware of Carson’s most recent criminal convictions, from 1990, until he read about them in the news Sunday. “I do not think Prime Minister Harper would have been aware of these more recent charges, either.”

Decisions on security clearances for Prime Minister’s Office staff are made in the Privy Council Office, the bureaucratic wing that serves the prime minister.

Harper said the government will have to do a better job of vetting employees following weekend revelations concerning Carson, who is currently under preliminary investigation by the RCMP.

“I did not know about these revelations that we’re finding out today. I don’t know why I did not know,” the prime minister said during an election campaign stop in rural Ontario.

“Had I known these things, I would not have … hired him.”

Harper indicated Monday something went awry. “Obviously we’re going to have to go back, look at our systems — and Privy Council Office is going to have to look at its systems — to make sure these things get caught.”

The fresh disclosures raised questions about Harper’s judgment in hiring Carson as his chief policy analyst and troubleshooter, roles he held until 2008.

The PMO asked the RCMP last month to investigate Carson after a probe by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network alleged the 65-year-old may have illegally lobbied the federal government on behalf of a company that employed his girlfriend, a 22-year-old one-time escort.

“I think it’s important to remember that Mr. Carson is not accused of anything that has to do with his employment in my office,” Harper said Monday.

“These accusations relate to things that occurred afterwards. As soon as we found out about those matters, we turned them over to the authorities.”

In his job as a senior adviser to Harper, Carson would have been privy to highly sensitive government files.

During his stint at the PMO, it was publicly known that Carson had been jailed, and disbarred by the Law Society of Upper Canada, in the early 1980s for two counts of defrauding clients.

But court documents uncovered by The Canadian Press show he had another run-in with the law in 1990, while he was working as a researcher for the Library of Parliament.

He was charged with defrauding a Budget Car and Truck Rental of a 1989 Toyota vehicle. He was also charged with defrauding the Bank of Montreal and the Toronto-Dominion Bank of sums exceeding $1,000 each.

In June 1990, Carson pleaded guilty to all three counts and received a suspended sentence and 24 months probation on condition that he “continue treatment at the R.O.H. (Royal Ottawa Hospital)” and make restitution of $4,000 within 23 months to the car-rental company.

Patrick McCann, who represented Carson in 1990 and is acting for him again now, said the suspended sentence demonstrates the charges were “not considered to be that serious.”

“He genuinely had a bit of a meltdown as a result of his marital break-up,” McCann said in an interview.

“It was part of the situation at the time that he was having some … psychiatric counselling and that was a factor, I think, that came into play too.”

A friend of Carson’s said he suffered “a stress-related mental collapse brought on by an ugly divorce.”