The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is investigating allegations of illegal lobbying by a former senior adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in connection with work for an energy advocacy group in Calgary. The RCMP says after Bruce Carson left the Office of the Prime Minister (PMO) he was paid for his top level involvement with federal contacts and to influence a new national energy strategy.

As a past senior adviser to Harper, Carson is subject to a five-year ban on lobbying under the Lobbying Act.

Lobbying Commissioner Karen Shepherd initiated a probe of Carson’s lobbying activities for the Canada School of Energy and Environment and a business-funded group called the Energy Policy Institute of Canada (EPIC). Shepherd referred the allegations to the RCMP in July 2012.

EPIC’s lawyers assumed the group would be in compliance if Carson’s job description was to communicate “for the purpose of information exchange and not to represent EPIC’s view, opinion, or to ask for a decision from government.”