Julie Couillard, shown arriving for a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa last August, has been named in the latest downfall of a government employee, this time an aide to Public Works Minister Michael Fortier. (Paul Chiasson/Canadian Press)

Federal Public Works Minister Michael Fortier dismissed a senior member of staff this week because the man had a romantic relationship with Julie Couillard last year when a company she represented was bidding on a big government contract.

Fortier says he only became aware on Tuesday that Couillard and one of his Quebec advisers, Bernard Côté, had been dating last year, before she became the girlfriend of former foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier.

Côté failed to inform him that he was dating Couillard, the Toronto Star quoted Fortier as saying, at the same time as Montreal property developer Groupe Kevlar Inc. was bidding for a multimillion-dollar contract with the Public Works Department.

Couillard is officially listed as an "affiliated agent" of Groupe Kevlar, although the firm said last month that she was not one of its employees.

"Mr. Côté should have recused himself from having any dealings with the matter at hand, which unfortunately he didn't," Fortier said. Côté offered his resignation, "and I accepted it," the public works minister told the Star.

The Star reports that Fortier found out about the relationship between Côté and Couillard after receiving a telephone call from a reporter for the Montreal newspaper La Presse, asking for comment on the link between the two.

Former PC candidate

"I've insisted with all my political staff that they disclose any dealings with suppliers in the context of matters being the subject of request for proposals," Fortier told the Star.

Côté was a special assistant in charge of Fortier's Montreal office, the newspaper says. He twice ran unsuccessfully for the federal Progressive Conservatives in Quebec, in 2000 and in a 2002 byelection. He was a former national vice-president of the now-defunct party.

Before joining Fortier's office, Côté worked in commercial real estate and property management.

Bernier resigned as foreign minister last month just hours before the broadcast of an interview with Couillard where she said he had left sensitive government documents at her Montreal home for more than five weeks.

Couillard had been controversial even before that because of her romantic relationships with several members of Montreal's biker and criminal underworld.

Commons committee investigates

She said in her interview last month that Bernier was aware of her background while they were involved and denied that she was a "biker chick."

The House of Commons public safety committee began hearings on Tuesday into whether national security was breached in the affair. MPs are also trying to find out if Couillard was investigated by RCMP and national security officials when she first began dating Bernier last spring.

Neither Bernier nor Prime Minister Stephen Harper will testify at the hearings, described by Harper as a "partisan circus." Conservative MPs on the committee voted against holding the hearings, but opposition members are in the majority.

Testifying before the committee on Tuesday, the RCMP assistant commissioner for federal and international operations, Raf Souccar, refused to comment on when Couillard came to be known to the police force, or what the Mounties knew about her.

But when asked by Liberal public safety critic Ujjal Dosanjh whether Couillard was known to the RCMP before the matter broke in the news, Souccar replied, "Yes, she was."

Couillard has also been invited to answer questions from committee members and could appear as early as next week, according to NDP MP Penny Priddy.