There’s Much More to the Bernier Affair than Meets the Eye

Not since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle penned a Sherlock Holmes story titled “The Second Stain”, in which the wife of a cabinet minister sells a top secret document to a foreign spy has there been a drama to equal the Maxime Bernier affair.

Just what documents did the hapless foreign minister leave in Julie Couillard’s apartment? Exactly who was bugging the former model’s quarters, including her mattress? Was it a unit of the Harper government itself or even a rogue outfit in Stephane Dion’s party? Can we exclude the possibility that a sting operation has been mounted by the Barack Obama campaign to get back at Harper for NAFTAgate?

Perhaps more probable, and even more unnerving, is the very real possibility that the biker gangs in Quebec have their own foreign policy and have been pursuing it assiduously. At first glance this may seem unlikely but in light of the botched flight of French daredevil Michel Fournier’s balloon in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, to which I will return, this sinister affair snaps into focus.

Is it credible that Bernier and Couillard just happened to meet by chance? Isn’t it much more probable that their meeting was carefully crafted to enmesh the minister in a web of intrigue? There are just too many supposed coincidences here for my liking. Anyone who has seen The Day of the Jackal will know that they always dispatch the beautiful and wily woman to seduce the dumbest member of the government, precisely as a way to obtain government secrets. And it didn’t take long for Couillard to parlay her relationship with Bernier into a face to face meeting with George W. Bush. Coincidence? What did she say to the President and what did he reveal to her?

How often do you tune in the BBC News, the news on France 2, and CNN’s Situation Room to see two Canadian stories reported in one day? Story number one was the revelation that Bernier had left top secret documents chez Couillard and that he was out of the cabinet. Story number two showed a red faced Michel Fournier storming out of his capsule as his balloon wisked away from him into space. And it was a Russian made balloon!

What we have been watching is no less than an elaborate ploy to make Canada appear ridiculous on the international stage. And it didn’t happen any old week. This was the week the Harper government had to decide whether to put Canada up for a seat on the UN Security Council.

Who benefits from all this? Cui bono? Clearly, those who don’t want the Harper government to have a seat on the Security Council are the major winners. We are already aware from the analysis above that the “who” includes Quebec’s biker gangs. Taking this one step further, who else is involved? It is well known that the country that will get the vacant seat at the UN if Canada doesn’t is Portugal.

Portugal? At first glance, a rather harmless country not much marred by organized crime, Portugal has a long and exposed coastline. Could the Algarve be the next target for criminal gangs? And will Fournier’s next, and perhaps successful, leap from a balloon be mounted over the Algarve?

All of this is much too important to be left in the hands of a parliamentary committee, or an aging judge at the head of a Royal Commission. The Harper government needs to fight fire with fire by sending one of its own into a liaison with the bikers to ferret out the truth, the way Ingrid Bergman did in Alfred Hitchcock's film Notorious.