L'Affaire Bernier - Couillard: More Gift Giving

It seems that Ms. Couillard gets around Conservative party circles rather more than one might expect.

"Mr. Bernard Côté failed to inform me that while he was in a personal relationship with Julie Couillard, at the same time she was also vying for government business for Kevlar and raised it with Mr. Côté," he said. "Mr. Côté should have recused himself of having any dealings with the matter at hand, which he unfortunately didn't."

I'm beginning to think that Ms. Couillard makes it clear that the Con$ need to start thinking with their grey matter...rather than hormone-flushed instinct.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

PMSH has got to be hating what's oozing out in the wake of L'Affaire Bernier.

OTTAWA–Officials from the Prime Minister's Office and CSIS agents met early this month to discuss Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier's controversial relationship with a woman known to have ties with biker gangs, Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh charged yesterday.

The meeting was held between May 1 and 8, according to Dosanjh. May 8 was the day the first news reports appeared detailing Julie Couillard's past romantic links to members of Quebec biker gangs.

Remember, that when Ms. Couillard had security people sweep her home, they told her they suspected that her bed had been bugged for some period of time.

There's two things that come to mind here - first, if CSIS did in fact bug Couillard's home, the question arises around the authority under which they did that; as well as whether or not they could have simply "acquired" the misplaced documents?

I can think of a myriad of different issues here, but the most unsettling is the idea that the PMO thinks it can justify bugging a private residence - when ostensibly, they have "no interest" in the matter. Do you want the government trying to regulate and monitor your bedroom?

Bernier-Couillard: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Bernier's dalliances are turning into quite the story. In this morning's newspaper, we find that Ms. Couillard had those papers for five weeks.

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.

Superficially that might almost seem reasonable - after all, no harm was really done, right?

Wrong.

This whole business calls into question the continence of the governing part with respect to classified documents. This is not just an "oops, I forgot them overnight" moment - not only did Bernier leave those papers for five weeks, it's pretty clear that he did exactly nothing to retrieve them:

“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.”

During that time, Ms. Couillard could easily have made as many copies as she desired. To dismissively say that "no secrets were breached" misses the point entirely. Those documents were classified for a reason, and both Harper and Bernier have shown us a blatant disregard for those reasons.

Further, it shows us the cracks and weaknesses in Harper's management style. In order to maintain the facade of being competent, Harper has to exact an ever increasing amount of direct control on his people, their actions and the actions of their associates. The question that the Bernier affair opens is not "what was breached?" (although that is a valid question), but rather we should be asking "what's next?".

Try as they might, the PMO cannot effectively control every action of the government and its ministers. Because the PMO has imposed such a strong grip on the ministerial and senior bureaucracy of all departments, you have to know that there's going to be more - it's inevitable. And next time may well be much more serious for Canada.

Canadians should not accept PMSH's blithe attempts to brush this mess off as a "non-issue" - just as AdScam demonstrated that the Chretien-era Liberals had lost sight of their responsibilities to the public, "L'Affaire Bernier" shows us that the HarperCon$ lack the flexibility, judgment and discretion necessary to safeguard Canada's interests.

Bye bye, Maxime

I hear that Maxime Bernier has resigned as minister of Foreign Affairs.

The excuse for Bernier's resignation seems pretty lame when you consider how fiercely Harper protects his inner circle:

“It is a very serious mistake – regardless of who the minister is, regardless of personal life – to leave classified documents in an unsecured location.”

A source tells The Canadian Press that Mr. Bernier left an extremely sensitive classified document at Ms. Couillard's apartment, and her lawyer notified the Foreign Affairs department about the document on the weekend.

Now, not only do we have the minister demonstrating yet again his incompetence by leaving files lying about, but worse, he leaves them at his girlfriend's apartment? Bernier's conduct on the world stage has been, well, disappointing to say the least - showing us that he has only a marginally better grasp of the subject than his predecessor.

But then again, how much depth in foreign affairs does Harper need when he takes his orders from the current occupant of the White House - a man whose idea of foreign affairs involves talking to California.

Somehow, handing the portfolio to David Emerson isn't exactly reassuring either - he's the man who handed $1 billion of Canada's money to the White House as part of Harper's vaunted "gettin' things done" softwood lumber agreement.