Conservative MP Maxime Bernier said Wednesday he had no idea about Julie Couillard's past until the scandal broke, and suggested the sensitive nature of documents he forgot at her home may have been exaggerated.
"I knew about her past, but only what she accepted to tell me," said Bernier, speaking in his Beauce riding, south of Quebec City. "I was told about the rumours on April 20, which is a few weeks before this whole situation became public. At that time, I was not involved with Miss Couillard any more."
Couillard has been involved with men who were either members of outlaw biker gangs or who had close ties to that world.
"I have learned in a very brutal way that in politics, the line between private lives and public lives is very thin," said Bernier.
He resigned as foreign affairs minister May 26, hours before Couillard revealed he had left government documents in her apartment in mid-April. She didn't return them to the government until May 25.
Bernier seemed to dismiss reports that the government documents were of an extremely sensitive nature. He said they were "preparatory notes" concerned with the NATO summit in Bucharest, but that he must have left them at Couillard's home after the meeting took place, likely on April 4.
"I never noticed that those documents were missing and I have no recollection of losing them," he said.
In an interview with the French-language TVA network, broadcast the same day as Bernier's resignation, Couillard said the scandal left her "destroyed" and "humiliated as a woman."
She said the fact Bernier left the documents at her apartment showed he has a "lack of consciousness."
"He was unconscious of what he was doing and that lack of consciousness brought me into this media circus,'' she said.
Couillard is expected to release a book about her relationship with Bernier -- and its aftermath -- in the fall.
Despite the scandal, Tasha Kheiriddin, a conservative political commentator in Montreal and a friend of Bernier, told CTV Newsnet that voters in Bernier's riding still support him.
"Within his riding, he is still beloved and he'd be re-elected tomorrow with probably as large a margin as he already had -- the last time was 68 per cent of the vote," she said.
"But outside the riding, he still has some work to do with the Quebec electorate to regain his credibility."
The House of Commons public safety committee has held hearings into the Bernier affair, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper has dismissed it as a "partisan circus."
No Conservative MPs are expected to appear before the committee. Couillard has also refused to testify, saying it would be unfair for her to make an appearance if Bernier does not do the same.
Before Bernier resigned, he had come under fire for other high-profile missteps as foreign affairs minister.
On April 14, during a trip to Afghanistan, he suggested Afghan President Hamid Karzai should fire the governor of Kandahar, where the bulk of Canada's troops are based.
He later backed away from his comment, saying, "Afghanistan is a sovereign state that makes its own decisions about government appointments."
A month later, he promised to make one of Canada's C-17 military cargo aircraft available to transport aid to Burma's cyclone survivors. But none of the four aircraft were available and the government had to spend $1 million to rent a Russian cargo aircraft.
