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Dubai: Even as the girlfriend of the disgraced Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier was telling the press that she was not a "biker's chick", one of Canada's leading newspaper Toronto Star, could not resist this headline, 'PM dumps Mad Max'.
Mad Max alludes to a Hollywood movie about a post-apocalyptic world where the bad guys go on a killing spree on motorbikes.
Julie Couillard, the 38- year-old Montrealer apparently has had links with the infamous Hell's Angels biker gang.
Star and La Presse recently revealed that Couillard also had a year-long relationship with a man who had underworld ties.
Businessman Robert Pepin had run up huge debts to several criminals including a gangland loan shark and a Hell's Angels biker. He committed suicide last year.
Murkier
It gets even more murkier. Montreal's Le Devoir reported that Bernier's girlfriend is listed as head of Itek Solutions Globales, a security firm. Couillard earlier made an unsuccessful bid for a contract to supply biometric equipment to the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority.
Bernier resigned after he left an envelope with secret cabinet documents at her house.
Couillard revealed in a TV interview that she was invited to 24 Sussex Drive by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's wife. She had met Bernier at a dinner party and the relationship quickly became intimate.
Rocky tenure
She was present at a swearing in of the federal cabinet in a revealing sundress which earned a rebuke from the prime minister's office. Couillard complained in the interview that the press was portraying her as a "trollop".
Bernier has had a rocky tenure. During his tour of Afghanistan he told reporters that Canada is seeking the ouster of Khandahar Governor Asadullah Khalid because of corruption. Ottawa had to quickly soft pedal and say it was not asking for any changes to the Afghan government, though Khalid's departure was close till Bernier's foot in the mouth.
Recently, Canada had to quickly hire a huge Russian cargo plane to ship copters to Myanmar after Bernier pledged to provide a C-17 though there were no C-17s available.
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