rfmcdonald | [BRIEF NOTE] The Bernier Affair (Reply)

The ongoing sex scandal surrounding Foreign Minister Maxine Bernier and his former girlfriend Julie Couillard, accused of having links to biker gangs, intensified recently when news that Bernier had left classified documents at Couillard's residence became public. Bernier has since resigned. Opposition parties in the federal parliament are now attacking the Conservative government for failing to notice this mistake even after five weeks had passed ("Five-week gap fuels outrage in Bernier affair").

Questions about how secret government documents went missing for five weeks without alarms being raised dogged Stephen Harper's government the day after Maxime Bernier was forced out as foreign affairs minister over the security breach.

The Prime Minister, in Paris on a European tour he began only hours after he announced Mr. Bernier's resignation, essentially declared the affair over – insisting that a Foreign Affairs Department review of the incident is enough, and rejecting an expanded probe.

But the scandal is likely to intensify calls for security checks of ministers' spouses and companions, and for control of classified government documents to be tightened.

Mr. Bernier resigned on Monday after admitting he left classified documents about an April NATO summit at the home of his ex-girlfriend Julie Couillard.

For weeks, after news reports surfaced about Ms. Couillard's past, the opposition had pounded the Conservatives with questions on whether her earlier relationships with members of criminal biker gangs posed a security risk – queries Mr. Harper rebuffed as intrusions into the pair's private lives.

Tuesday, the opposition charged that the government had ignored serious security issues – and expressed skepticism that classified documents could be misplaced for five weeks without raising government flags.

“Why did it take the government five weeks to discover that documents were missing, and why did it take the government five weeks to ask a question either of the member for Beauce, the former minister, or of Madame Couillard?” Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae asked in the Commons.

“Why do you sit on your duffs and do nothing for five weeks?”

Government House Leader Peter Van Loan insisted that the Prime Minister's Office was told about the missing documents only on Monday, “and after being informed of the situation with these documents, the Prime Minister acted.”

The affair has attracted some international attention.

While the breaking news of the resignation came too late for overseas publications, some did spice up their wire service headlines on websites by playing up the woman behind the fallen cabinet minister.

"Good night and very bad luck," titled Australia's Sydney Morning Herald over a story from the Reuters News Agency, while Britain's Daily Telegraph went with "The minister, the classified papers and a lover linked to Hells Angels."

Few websites didn't run with a photo of the former so-called ministerial couple, including the BBC website which, like many outlets, pointed out that Bernier was under pressure to resign following previous slip-ups such as his suggestion the "Afghan President Hamid Karzai replace the governor of Kandahar province, where Canada has 2,500 troops stationed." Chinese News Agency Xinhua noted Bernier "has been under fire recently for his former girlfriend's links with an organized crime group."

"A calamitous moral affair" put an end to his career, wrote France's Le Figaro - under the banner "A Canadian minister forgets his files at his lover's home" - which added "pretty" to international descriptions of Couillard, which ranged from "gorgeous" and "glamorous" to the "provocatively dressed," used in a widely run Associated Press piece.

The French paper colourfully noted that "the depth of the neckline had reddened the cheeks of royal gendarmes," during the swearing-in ceremony.

India's Hindustan Times also referred to the ceremony: "the gorgeous woman also made headlines in August 2007 when dressed in a plunging neckline she accompanied Bernier for his swearing-in as minister for Foreign Affairs."

Is it because no one expects sex scandals in Canada? This whole mess does seem to be Canada's biggest sex scandal since the Gerda Munsinger sex scandal of the 1960s, for whatever it's worth.