Bernier Burned

Ah, just when I said nothing was likely to happen in Canadian politics until at least September...

Our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maxime Bernier, resigned on Monday and was replaced, on an interim basis by David Emerson, the man who--of the two of them at least--probably should have had the job in the first place.

PM Harper has repeatedly said that Mr. Bernier's resignation was accepted because he left classified documents in a "non-secure location", namely his ex-girlfriend's apartment. The man screwed up, and lost his job for it. Deservedly so. I better make that clear. Maxime Bernier simply deserved to be canned.

Except in politics it's never simple. The media jackals have ripped into the carcass, scenting the faintest whiff of scandal and tearing off after it as if they've lost their minds. The ex-girlfriend, you see, was once married to (my God!) a biker. An apparantly reformed biker, who turned police informant and testified against a dozen of his former "colleagues", as CBC puts it. (Does that make it better or worse?) And--ooooh, a pattern!--before that she dated a different guy who also had ties to organized crime. And who also turned state's evidence, or tried to; he was shot dead for that sin.

From this juicy synopsis (and undoubtedly Julie Couillard's, ahem, juicy appearance, which the press has played up), there seems to be this inference that documents pertaining to national security have fallen into the hands of the Hell's Angels. So what if the documents allegedly pertained to a (then) upcoming NATO summit in Bucharest, where Canada hoped to secure commitments from other countries for more troops in Afghanistan? Even assuming the preposterous notion that this information had become public knowledge to an admittedly unsavory part of the public, and further assuming the biker gangs cared, what the hell would they do with that information? Fly to Bucharest on those new Harley-Davidson Airbuses and negotiate for us? Hey, maybe we could scare other countries into helping us out a little. Or maybe we could ship all the biker gangs off to Afghanistan...they'd have a ball. Thriving drug trade, livin' on the edge...

I'm being flip. In all seriousness, Julie Couillard's past has nothing to do with this. So the woman dated some "interesting" people. The thing I find interesting is that both of them, the guy she dated and the guy she married, left their gangs shortly after they met her.

Look, it's a stereotype: women are attracted to the bad boys. Actually, it's not so much a sterotype as evolution in action. You're not supposed to acknowledge it nowadays, when there are many women can can handily beat the snot out of most men, but there's still a little genetic twitter whenever a woman beholds a guy who's not afraid to dole out a little protection. The stereotype is that women seek to "reform" such men. Some do, some don't. Couillard, judging by the actions of her beaux, obviously did.

And here's something I never would have written ten years ago, before I met the woman I married: just because a guy calls himself a biker, doesn't mean he's a career criminal out to rape your house and pillage your daughter. In fact, the majority of people in the Hell's Angels and Satan's Choice and what have you are, despite all appearances, pretty benign. My wife's known a few of them in her time, even been friends with some. Most of them are in it for the image.
Of course, that doesn't even begin to excuse the actions of the really bad guys who tend to roost at the top of those organizations, nor the odd bad apple who really is the guy Mom warned you about--but Eva says if she was in trouble on the highway, she'd trust a biker to help her before most.

All of this is, of course, just as irrelevant to the case at hand. There are some issues worth looking into, here: why did Couillard hold on to those documents for five weeks? If you're "panicked" by the fact that you have them, as she says she was, don't you turn them in immediately? It'd be one thing if they just materialized in your house--I wouldn't begin to know who to call--but it should have been pretty obvious to Couillard where the documents came from and how to get them back into the proper hands.
For that matter, how do classified documents go missing and unnoticed for five weeks in a place where sparrows can't fart without Harper's attention and permission?
Who, if anyone, gave Couillard a case of the bed-bugs, and to what end?
Another issue, and a question for PM Harper: whatever did you see in this man that convinced you he was cut out for Foreign Affairs? Just gotta have that francophone in a position of power, eh?

By all means, investigate this. But leave Julie Couillard's past in the past, where it belongs.