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Bernier Left Sensitive Documents in Girlfriend's Apartment, Couillard Says

Posted on: Tuesday, 27 May 2008, 03:00 CDT

By Nelson Wyatt, THE CANADIAN PRESS

MONTREAL - The former girlfriend of ex-foreign minister Maxime Bernier said he left sensitive government documents in her residence and was aware of her past involvement with two men allegedly tied to Quebec biker gangs, she alleged Monday in a candid interview.

"Maxime came to see me and he left a document behind," said Julie Couillard, who also claimed that evidence recently found in her apartment suggested it had been bugged at one point.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper accepted Bernier's resignation hours before the 24-minute-long interview with the French-language TVA network aired and was broadcast on website canoe.ca. The interview was taped Sunday and is the first time Couillard has publicly spoken about her controversial relationship with Bernier.

Harper insisted Bernier's resignation had nothing to do with the TVA interview, or connections to Couillard.

The prime minister told an extraordinary evening news conference on Parliament Hill that Bernier's controversial relationship with a woman linked to the Hells Angels was not a factor in the decision.

One source told The Canadian Press the package included a mix of classified material and other briefing notes publicly available through the Access to Information Act.

The package, he said, was preparation material for Bernier's trip to the NATO summit in Bucharest - where Canada announced its intention to remain in Afghanistan until 2011.

Couillard said when she found the document she contacted a lawyer for advice, who told her it was the property of the Canadian government.

"The document was given back," she said, adding it was left by accident.

Couillard also said Bernier had shrugged off revelations about her past.

"His reaction was like, well, these are hard things that you went through," she said.

But these "hard things" would end up splashing their relationship all over the media, result in questions about national security and leave Couillard wondering if her bed had been electronically bugged.

"Apparently, there were some (listening devices) in the boxspring of the mattress in my bedroom," she said in the interview.

The federal government has always insisted that Couillard was not the subject of a security check, saying that usually isn't done with ministers' girlfriends.

However, Couillard said she had her home professionally swept for listening devices in the last three weeks as the controversy raged around her.

"They had a kind of a smirk and they said, 'well, ma'am, this is a classic cleanup operation," she said of the sweeping crew. "He said, 'Ma'am, the evidence that we found, those microphones were taken out very recently."

She said her home alarm had been tripped recently.

"He said, 'Whoever put them there didn't want you to find any microphones for you to have proof that you were under surveillance'."

Couillard, a former model and aspiring actress, first got Canadians' attention when she attended Bernier's swearing-in ceremony in August 2007 wearing a low-cut dress for the occasion that reportedly drew an admonishment for Bernier from Harper later.

She said Monday that was her first experience with protocol and she had asked Bernier for advice on what to wear. He suggested the now infamous dress.

"Literally the next day I knew I should've listened to my gut feeling and not worn that dress," she said. "(I felt) used. Because then I saw the reaction of Maxime and all the press it brought him. He didn't even hide the fact that was exactly what he wanted to do."

But it was revelations three weeks ago that Couillard had links to Quebec bikers when the province was embroiled in a vicious biker turf war over drugs that took her relationship with Bernier to the floor of the House of Commons.

Couillard said the controversy has killed her career as a real-estate agent and had her hiding in her home behind closed drapes for three weeks.

Now, she says, she wants to regain her credibility and her dignity.

"I was humiliated as a woman," she said. "I haven't done anything wrong."

Couillard met Bernier at a supper hosted by a friend in 2007. She said she had been recently approached by the Conservatives who had sounded her out about becoming a candidate. She said she and Bernier had a nightcap and became involved about a month later.

She said she told him she dated Gilles Giguere, a reputed Montreal crime figure, but that he only knew a man named Bob Savard, who knew Maurice (Mom) Boucher, a Hells Angels kingpin who was one of the generals in Quebec's biker war.

Savard has been identified as a Boucher lieutenant but Couillard said neither Giguere nor Savard were bikers.

She acknowledged husband Stephane Sirois was a member of the Rockers, a Hells puppet club, when she met him.

"When I met Stephane, yes he was a biker and I told him that I was not interested in seeing him because of that fact," she said. "Stephane made a choice of leaving the biker gang that he was with, the Rockers, and while I was with him he was not a biker anymore."

She said categorically: "I was not a biker's chick" and denied having any other contact with that world.

Giguere, who met Couillard in 1993, was found dead in a ditch in 1996 after he became a police informant. They had arrested him with a cache of submachine-guns and drugs.

In 1997, she began dating and later married Sirois, who admitted to being an enforcer for the Rockers. He also became an informant and testified against a dozen of his fellow colleagues at a mega-trial in 2002. He and Couillard divorced in 1999.

But she said she was always treated well and with respect when she was with Sirois and Giguere and felt more secure than she has in the past three weeks.

Bernier had told her to think carefully about becoming his girlfriend when he asked her because as a public figure he couldn't change girlfriends all the time.

"No matter how our couple life would go, publicly speaking it was a year mandate," she said.

While with Bernier, Couillard dined with Harper and his wife and met U.S. President George W. Bush when she and Bernier attended the United Nations General Assembly.

She said Bush approached Bernier and her in a corridor and, glancing at her, jovially told Bernier, "Well, well, well, haven't you been keeping good company."

Couillard confirmed that Bernier left a government document at her apartment in mid-April and she had a lawyer return it to the Foreign Affairs Department. She said leaving the document at her apartment reflected a "lack of consciousness" on Bernier's part.

"He was unconscious of what he was doing and that lack of consciousness brought me into this media circus."

Source: Canadian Press

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