He said. She said. Bernier in an integrity fight.

Agreed. Bernier, instead of answering questions put to him by his parliamentary colleagues has decided to issue his excuses via other means.

"Did Ms. Couillard inform me of past links with people involved in organized crime? The answer is no. She didn't inform me, nor did anyone else at any level. I knew of her past only what she wished to tell me," he told about 400 supporters who gathered at a hotel ballroom in Bernier's hometown.

"I only became aware of the rumours surrounding Ms Couillard's past on April 20, a few weeks before the information became public. At that time, I was no longer dating Ms Couillard."

And with that, Bernier creates a "He said/She said" hoping that speaking from his station alone will impeach the word of someone of a "lesser" station. The member of parliament vs the biker chick. Bernier has now challenged the public to choose which one of them is a liar and he's gambling that, given the unenviable position of having to believe a politician or an associate of a criminal gang, you will gravitate to the safety of believing the politician, regardless of how inept and clueless he may appear.

Score one for the biker chick.

If Mr. Bernier had been eager to set the record straight, he would have appeared before the parliamentary committee that for weeks requested his presence. At the very least, he would have answered the questions of reporters. Instead, he delivered a prepared text that sounded more like a campaign speech than an explanation.

We then have the explanation of the "misplaced" documents. Again, from The Star:

"These briefing notes were not sensitive enough to be bar-coded, which explains why their disappearance did not set off any alarms in my department. For my part, I did not notice they were missing, I do not recall misplacing them."

Really? That would lead to even further questions. Like, What were those briefing notes doing out of your briefcase in the presence of a non-involved person?

The briefing notes in question were supposedly those used for the Bucharest NATO summit in 2007 and appeared in Coulliard's residence after that summit had concluded. So why the hell would anybody remove briefing notes from an already concluded meeting? It's not like they represented homework or study material for some future event. If the documents are what we have been told they are, it would make no sense that they found their way out of the container in which they were being transported. If they were so meaningless they would have remained in a case, in the dark.

The fact that the documents were not bar-coded because they were not "sensitive enough" is utter bullshit. That and it speaks poorly for Bernier's immediate and closest aids that every document he took with him to Bucharest bearing a security classification was not accounted for and mustered back into secure stowage.

Ordinary seamen and privates in the Canadian Forces, when their trades require them to handle sensitive information, learn very early that any form of negligence surrounding the physical security of documents marked CONFIDENTIAL or higher will land them in a chair on the wrong side of the room at a standing court martial. Yet a minister of the Crown passes off a much more heinous act with a mere wave. They weren't that secret.

And then back to the G&M:

And there are other matters of public interest that Mr. Bernier declined to mention altogether. In particular, there is his alleged discussion with Ms. Couillard of government contracts in which she may have had an interest while he was Industry minister. And there are broader concerns about what other sensitive matters he may have discussed with her during his time in Foreign Affairs.

Score two for the biker chick.