Foreign Affairs Minister Resigns After Security Breach, Harper says No Secrets Revealed

by Rob Walker | May 27, 2008 at 10:00 am

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It's a strange case that reminds one more of an episode of 'Desparate Housewives' or '24' than Parliament hill.

But just weeks after coming under fire for dating a woman with known former ties to biker gang members (even being married to one of them), Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier resigned from his Cabinet post.

The straw that broke the camel's back was apparently a set of documents highlighting a classified NATO meeting in Brussels, that was left at his ex-girlfriend's apartment. Bernier resigned over this, and the opposition party is calling for an investigation and probe.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Harper says that it didn't matter who he dated, it just mattered that he left classified material lying around her apartment.

Read Previous NowPublic coverage here.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he doesn't believe national security was compromised after classified documents were left at the apartment of the former girlfriend of Maxime Bernier, an incident that led to Bernier's resignation as foreign affairs minister.
Harper made the comments in Paris at the beginning of a three-day visit to Europe, as his government deals with the fallout from Bernier's surprise resignation on Monday.

"We have no information that would indicate that documents have circulated," Harper told reporters in French. "The documents were returned to the government of Canada. But it is our intention to review the incident to ensure that is the case. But thus far, we have no information that would suggest that any secrets have been revealed."

Here's an interesting quote from Prime Minister Harper:

On Monday, during a hastily arranged news conference to announce Bernier's resignation, Harper said that Bernier's departure from cabinet had nothing to do with his private life.

"I don't think it matters who a minister is dating," Harper told reporters in Ottawa on Monday. "I don't think it matters anything about the private life of some private citizen; what matters here is that rules respecting government classified documents were broken."