The uproar in Ottawa over External Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier’s dalliances with a former Hells biker mama smells more like a political assassination than anything else.
And the more I look at this file, the more I think Julie Couillard may have been working with the police. You be the judge.
Here are the nuts of the story in this morning’s La Presse: Last August, Tory MP Maxime Bernier presented himself at the official residence of Governor General Michaelle Jean to be sworn in as Stephen Harper’s external affairs minister. He was accompanied by the sultry Julie Couillard, wearing an audaciously low-cut dress. Since then, Stephen Harper has learned that the former model associated with the Hell’s Angels in the 90s and the capital is talking about nothing else.
Bernier and the 38-year-old former model were last seen together just two months ago at a reception at the Chateau Laurier. Her ex — who she divorced in 1999 — was a member of the Rockers, the wet-work branch of the Hells and Gilles Giguere, her Hells Nomad boyfriend before that, was assassinated.
Did the Tory spin machine plant this story in this morning’s La Presse? Bernier’s in the Harper doghouse these days after suggesting the governor of Kandahar should be replaced. The former golden-haired boy of the Tory Quebec wing was also mocked for a photo op handing out Mae Wests to Canadian troops and forgetting who governs Haiti.
Dimitri Soudas, Harper’s press flak, told La Presse to call Bernier’s flak, and Hrab told the scribes to call Couillard. She had nothing to say.
The problem is this: Couillard lived for three years with Gilles Giguère, the muscle for Robert Bob Savard, the loanshark for Maurice Mom Boucher and the Hells Angels Nomads chapter. They were together until one day in 1996, when Giguère left their east end home to go to a meeting. His bullet-riddled body was found in a north-shore ditch two days later. The Wolverines, the SQ’s antigang squad, believes he was executed because Mom was afraid he’d become a police informant.
Couillard was already known to police. Four months before Giguere was offed, she and her father were arrested in connection with a murder and extortion conspiracy involving an east-end real estate agent. The wolverines held her for 18 hours before releasing her uncharged. She complained to the Police Ethics Board.
After a year wearing black, Couillard married Stéphane Sirois a member of the Rockers, the military wing of the Hells Angels Nomads chapter. En 1997, Mom Boucher gave Sirois an ultimatum: divorce Julie Couillard or quit les Rockers. Sirois did both. He became a police informant in March, 1999. His divorce became final three months later.
Like I said, the fact point to Couillard having been a Woverines handler who got real close to Boucher and his gang, most of whom are doing hard time to life for crimes like killing prison guards. Bernier’s squeeze isn’t the story. Why she was outed, and who outed her, is.
