Politics: New report says ex-girlfriend had recent links with criminal underworld

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OTTAWA - The Harper government says Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier's recent romantic liaison is no threat to national security, despite a news report that said his ex-girlfriend's links to the criminal underworld were more recent than previously thought.

But the Conservatives refuse to say why there's no security issue, or whether authorities investigated the affair.

Bernier's former relationship became political fodder once again Friday after Montreal's La Presse newspaper reported that Julie Couillard lived with a man with ties to the Hells Angels three years ago.

Couillard's penchant for bikers and bad-boys was thought to have been limited to one husband and one live-in boyfriend before 1999.

But La Presse said she lived until 2005 with Robert Pepin, who the newspaper said owed money to a Hells Angels loanshark when he committed suicide two years ago and once pleaded guilty to trafficking stolen goods.

Sometime between the end of her relationship with Pepin and her appearance with Bernier at a cabinet swearing-in ceremony last summer, she began dating the minister.

Security experts and opposition parties say a relationship between a cabinet minister and a someone with criminal ties poses a handful of potential security risks.

People close to Bernier have described how his ex-girlfriend took an active enough interest in his professional life that it annoyed some of his departmental staff.

But when asked whether it had done anything to check for a security breach, the government dismissed the risk.