OTTAWA—Bruce Carson, a former senior aide to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, faces new charges in connection with prohibited lobbying activity he engaged in after leaving the PMO, the RCMP says.

The RCMP’s National Division charged Carson on May 7 with three counts of lobbying while prohibited under the Lobbying Act, and one count of influence peddling under the Criminal Code, according to an RCMP statement.

“These charges are the result of his lobbying activities on behalf of the Canada School of Energy and Environment and on behalf of the Energy Policy Institute of Canada,” said RCMP spokeswoman Cpl. Lucy Shorey.

The charges were laid in Ottawa, where the alleged activity took place according to an earlier affidavit filed by the RCMP.

That affidavit, filed in support of a judicial order to obtain Carson’s bank records, outlined RCMP suspicions that Carson used federal Conservative contacts at the top-most levels of the government to influence the development of a new national energy strategy, contrary to the Criminal Code and the Lobbying Act, which bans lobbying within five years of holding a public office.

Carson’s lawyer Pat McCann is challenging the RCMP’s characterization of Carson’s activity as lobbying.

“I don’t have any details of the evidence yet. From what I do know, I have difficulty understanding the basis for these charges. My understanding is that Mr. Carson was simply attempting to gather support for the creation of a national energy policy.”

Carson is scheduled to appear in court on the new charges on June 18.

It’s not clear what impact, if any, the new charges will have on Carson’s long-delayed trial in a separate case.

He was charged in 2012 with fraud in connection with allegations that he tried to use his political connections to win federal contracts for water filtration services on native reserves.

That trial was to have been held last summer, but was delayed to May 26 due to Carson’s ill health. Carson is now said to be fine. However, the Crown attorney on the file was recently appointed a judge on Ontario’s Court of Justice. A source said the matter is expected to be re-scheduled to June 2.

Carson — a once-disbarred lawyer in the 1980s — was a senior policy adviser in Harper’s PMO after the Conservatives took power in 2006. He was briefly assigned as chief of staff to then-environment minister Rona Ambrose, before returning to the PMO where he was an influential player.

In 2007, the federal government provided $15 million to the Canada School of Sustainable Energy, a collaborative project of the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary and the University of Lethbridge — which Carson would then go on to lead.

Yet even after Carson became executive director of the school, he returned to the PMO on unpaid leaves of absence from the school to advise Harper, first during the 2008 election, then during the prorogation crisis in January 2009.

Environmental activists at Greenpeace believe Carson’s work to set up an oilsands-friendly national energy policy was actively encouraged at the highest levels of government, the federal public service and financed by federal taxpayers, according to spokesman Keith Stewart, who says that the conflict of interest questions raised by Carson’s roles were well-known to Harper and his then-chief of staff Guy Giorno.

“When you read the minutes and emails we obtained under Access to Information, Carson was treated as if he had been seconded, at public expense, to the oil industry to organize their lobbying efforts,” Stewart said.

“It’s almost as if they thought the rules on lobbying didn’t apply because they couldn’t see any difference between what the Harper government and oil industry were trying to do with respect to environmental laws and pro-tar sands public relations.”

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NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus said Canadians should question how did Carson, “this convicted fraudster, get through the Privy Council checks?”

“How did he get into the prime minister’s inner sanctum given his record? The fact that we’re seeing all manner of new charges against Mr. Carson really raises questions about the operating culture within the Prime Minister’s Office. This man had the prime minister’s ears, he had the prime minister’s trust.”

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