Bernier’s Girlfriend Had Mafia Links
Posted June 3, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
First it was the Hell’s Angels. Now it’s the mafia. It all adds up to a giant headache for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Opposition MPs grilled Harper in the House of Commons Tuesday after a new report surfaced linking Julie Couillard with a well-known mafia figure.
Couillard dated former Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier — a romance that caused much grief after she was linked to members of the Hell’s Angels. That in turn caused some to question whether national security was compromised, and Bernier resigned his post last week.
It looked like that would be the end of the drama, but the issue resurfaced again with the latest mafia link.
Opposition MPs demanded to know if Harper was aware of the connection to the mob.
But Harper steadfastly maintains that there is no security risk and adds that he doesn’t ask for or receive security information about private citizens.
“I don’t seek and I don’t get security information on private Canadian citizens,” he said.
But Liberal MP Denis Coderre countered that it’s unlikely that neither the RCMP or Canadian Security Intelligence Service wouldn’t have warned Harper when one of the country’s top diplomats was dating a person with Couillard’s shady associations.
“She was well known to law enforcement,” Coderre argued, adding that she was once questioned by the RCMP for 15 hours.
According to reports, Couillard dated mobster Tony Volpato before moving on to the biker set. She was also a close friend and confidant of Frank Cotroni, the chief of Montreal’s Calabrian Mafia who died in 2004.
The Public Safety Committee will hold an inquiry into the matter next week. Julie Couillard is expected to testify, but Bernier and Harper say they won’t take part.
