Scratching the surface

For all the talk about Maxime Bernier's ignominious and long-overdue removal from cabinet, I'm surprised there doesn't seem to have been much comment on what the reason for his departure might have meant at the time:

Maxime Bernier has resigned as foreign affairs minister, after he acknowledged leaving sensitive government documents out in the open -- apparently at his former girlfriend's home.

Sources told CTV News the documents included classified information for last April's NATO summit in Romania. One sensitive document contained details about NATO's military strategy in Afghanistan.

Bernier learned that he had left behind the documents Monday night, but didn't tell Prime Minister Stephen Harper until Tuesday afternoon. He then resigned from his cabinet post...

Couillard told Quebec broadcaster TVA that the sensitive document had been left at her home in mid-April.

"Maxime came to my house and the document in question was left at my house," she said. "For now, what I can tell you is that the document made me feel very uncomfortable. I was referred to a top lawyer in that field, who told me ... what was the proper legal procedure (to return it)."

Now, it's difficult to take Bernier at face value in his claim not to have had any clue that he'd left the documents behind until this weekend. But it's still worth asking the question about what impact his leaving the documents behind would have had at the time.

After all, for Bernier to be telling the truth now, it would have to be true that in at least one major foreign summit, Stephen Harper's choice to represent Canada's interests was so clueless that he didn't manage to notice that he was lacking of what would seem to have been essential background documents. (Next up on the Wheel of Excuses - "When they said to look at the military strategy for Afghanistan, I thought they meant the lunch menu.")

And indeed, that would suggest that nobody else around him would have been observant enough to notice the problem either - since if anybody had noticed the materials were missing and raised the question of where they'd gone, there'd be no excuse for Bernier or anybody else to claim that today's news wasn't known earlier.

Of course, there's another alternative - being that the problem might have been at least suspected for some time but covered up. But even that alternative would involve at least as much incompetence as dishonesty, given that Couillard apparently had to figure out what to do with the documents for herself rather than being contacted by anybody retracing Bernier's steps.

Either way, it seems clear that the problems within the Cons' government go far beyond Bernier's carelessness alone. And Bernier's resignation should only be the beginning of what needs to be done to check on just how much damage he and his party have done.

Update: As Kady O'Malley notes, the story is in fact that the briefing notes were left at Couillard's home weeks after the actual NATO summit. Which would avoid some of the questions above, but raise an even larger one as to how that sequence of events could possibly be explained.