Bernier confesses to his constituents on girlfriend and all
ST-GEORGES-DE-BEAUCE, Que. — Former Foreign Affairs minister Maxime Bernier's ex-girlfriend says he told her that you can’t change girlfriends the way you change shirts.
Bernier spoke Wednesday at a meeting of his constituents to give his version of events that resulted in his recent resignation from cabinet.
Bernier said that he when he became involved with ex-girlfriend Julie Couillard he wasn’t aware of her colourful past until he heard rumours about it after they had stopped dating.
"Did Ms. Couillard inform me of her past links to people implicated with organized crime? The answer is no. She did not inform me and never has anyone else at any level," he said. "I knew of her past what she would tell me and was only told of rumours concerning her past on April 20, a few weeks before the information became public and at the time we were no longer dating."
Speaking to supporters in his home riding, Bernier was breaking his silence about his side of a relationship with Julie Couillard, which ended up costing him his job after he left secret documents at her house.
Bernier was greeted in the room with a round of applause by supporters and shook many hands as he made way to the podium.
Bernier resigned May 26, just hours before a television station aired an interview with Couillard, whose previous boyfriends have included members of the Mafia and an outlaw motorcycle gang. In the interview she revealed that Bernier had left classified briefing documents about a NATO meeting at her home for several weeks.
"The briefing notes were not sensitive enough to be bar-coded, which explained why their disappearance did not set off alarms," he said.
"For my part I did not notice they were missing. I do not recall misplacing them."
Bernier said he had gone through "very difficult moments" since the controversy broke out, discovering the fine line between personal and public life the hard way.
To which someone in the crowd shouted, "We're with you!"
Bernier said that after a period of reflection he was as convinced as ever that he belonged in office representing his constituents.
He repeated that he assumed full responsibility for misplacing the documents, stressing he learned they were missing on the evening of May 25, a day before he resigned.
Couillard rejected an invitation to appear before a parliamentary committee looking into the breach that raised national security issues, saying she feared she could face charges.
However she intends to tell her life's story in an autobiography to be published this fall.
While the government has ordered the Department of Foreign Affairs to investigate the security breach, it has rejected calls for a public inquiry or an RCMP investigation, saying the opposition is just trying to satisfy its prurient curiosity.
A background check was done on Bernier as recently as April and no concerns were raised about him or his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, the prime minister's national security adviser told a Commons committee last week.
During the TV interview, Couillard said Bernier was aware in the midst of the public furor over their relationship that he had left the documents behind at her home, but he had not called to retrieve them because the couple had stopped communicating.
"He isn't without knowledge of it. He's the one who left it at my place. He knows. But we haven't talked again since that event," she told the interviewer.
In the same interview, Couillard discussed how she had met Bernier and how the relationship "fairly rapidly" became intimate. At one point, when he asked her to be his girlfriend, Bernier told her if she accepted she would have to be his girlfriend for at least a year because in his position he couldn't change girlfriends the way you change shirts.
She denied ever asking to be present at any government meeting or ever suggesting changes to any of his speeches.
The government quickly faced calls for tighter rules concerning sensitive contracts after it was revealed that Couillard was part of a bid for an airport security contract a few years after she had been married to a member of a biker gang.
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