Ottawa’s House of Cards

If you haven’t heard of Bruce Carson, you’re about to. The Bruce Carson scandal is a House of Cards-worthy winding, twisting story that has it all: Conservatives, Liberals, accusations of illegal lobbying and kickbacks.

This is Bruce. He’s the latest Harper operative on trial, this time for allegations of influence peddling. He's also charged with three counts of illegal lobbying - but that trial comes later. Bruce has a fascinating past - including being disbarred for defrauding his clients. He was also charged with fraud involving Budget Car Rental and a 1989 Toyota. We’re not sure what that’s about. Anyway, Bruce used to work for the Liberals and then sometime in the 1990s did an about-face and decided he was a Conservative. But don’t worry – we’ll come back to the Liberals later. After he left Harper’s office, he allegedly leveraged his connections in the Prime Minister’s Office to lobby for H20 Global – a company that sells water treatment equipment to First Nations for a profit. At the time, Parliament was working on a bill to increase water access to First Nations – so this was important. He apparently used his connections to lobby the most senior officials in Harper’s office – all the while, allegedly setting up his fiancée to get massive kickbacks – 20% of all sales on First Nations reserves. You can’t sell influence like that. But it wasn't just Conservatives involved. Guess who was reportedly “in the loop”? A guy named Dan Gagnier, an executive at the Energy Policy Institute of Canada. Where is he now? He's Justin Trudeau’s campaign co-chair. And guess who was president of the Energy Policy Institute? Doug Black - who is now a Conservative senator, appointed by Harper. He was "in the loop" on the whole thing too. So we’ll see how this all turns out. But one thing is clear – we don't need to replace Liberal corruption with Conservative corruption. It’s time for change in Ottawa.