Top Mountie not involved in Carson clearance: source

A senior intelligence source says Canada's RCMP commissioner was not involved in the security clearance process for a disbarred lawyer who worked for the PMO.

Until recently, Bruce Carson was in good standing with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, having worked as a senior adviser for the Conservative leader for several years until he left the Prime Minister's Office to take a job in Calgary.

The relationship between the two men changed last month when Harper asked the RCMP to investigate allegations that Carson had illegally lobbied the federal government on behalf of a company that employed his girlfriend -- a 22-year-old former escort named Michelle McPherson.

The investigation into Carson's conduct has put his criminal past in the spotlight, including the two fraud counts he served jail time for in the early 1980s and three additional counts of fraud he pleaded guilty to in 1990, which have only recently been publicly revealed.

Harper has said he would not have hired Carson if he knew the full extent of his criminal past, though the former adviser said he did not hide anything when filling out a security-clearance application form in January 2006.

On the campaign trail Wednesday, Harper said he knew that Carson had some legal difficulties "a very long time ago," but he had an exemplary employment record in the decades that followed.

"The fact that we now learned there may have been some more recent difficulties is something I didn't know at the time," Harper told reporters in Markham, Ont.

"I don't know why we didn't know, but obviously we will look at our systems to try to find out."

William Elliot was serving as the national security adviser in the Privy Council Office when Carson applied for security clearance in 2006.

Reports emerged Tuesday suggesting Elliott had been the person who approved Carson's security clearance, but a senior intelligence official told The Canadian Press that the current RCMP commissioner was not involved in the file.

Speaking to the media on condition of anonymity, the source said that the national security adviser rarely plays a role in security screening for staff members like Carson.

The source said it would be "very unusual" for Carson to be "directly involved in questions of clearances."

On Wednesday, Harper said he did not know who "specifically" conducts the security clearances as "that is decided completely independent from the political wing of government."

The Conservative leader has previously said the PCO was responsible for giving Carson clearance.

In an email to The Canadian Press, former PCO Clerk Alex Himelfarb said "the PCO is responsible for security clearance and the clerk is responsible for what happens in PCO."

But insiders say Himelfarb, who served as PCO clerk when Harper first took office, may not have been informed about Carson's criminal record, which is not in itself grounds for denying security clearance.

Treasury Board guidelines say that in such cases "an official of the (PCO) security office may brief the manager regarding the nature and the severity of the offence."

The Canadian Press reports that only two people could have served as Carson's manager at the time he received the security clearance: Transition team leader Derek Burney or Ian Brodie, Harper's former chief of staff.

On Tuesday, Burney said he had no knowledge of Carson's convictions from 1990 and knew nothing about security clearances for members of his team.

"I was completely unaware of security clearances for him or anybody else," Burney said. "The issue never came up."

Mel Cappe served as Privy Council clerk during the Jean Chretien era.

Cappe told The Canadian Press that in his experience, the PCO security office would have the RCMP, Canadian Security Intelligence Service and Canada Revenue Agency do background checks on prospective PMO staffers.

After the background checks were completed, the PCO security office would then relay any concerns to the chief of staff, making recommendations as to the level of security clearance that should be given.

"It would be for the chief of staff to say we're prepared to bear this risk," said Cappe, who has no knowledge of the Carson case, nor of how the current security clearance process may have changed.

Cappe said that the PCO security office would rarely refuse to grant clearance to a candidate unless they posed a potentially serious risk to national security. He said the prime minister and clerk would not be aware of the process in most cases.

With files from The Canadian Press