The Canadian Foreign Minister has been forced to resign after leaving Nato summit documents at the home of a girlfriend with ties to biker gangs.

Maxime Bernier, 45, dubbed “Mad Max” after a string of foreign policy gaffes, made Julie Couillard his designated travelling companion on official business despite her previous relationships with two outlaw bikers, one of whom was murdered.

The 38-year-old former model dined at the Canadian Prime Minister's official residence, attended a diplomatic reception at the Canadian Embassy in Paris and met President Bush on a visit to the United Nations.

But the spurned lover put an abrupt end to Mr Bernier's ministerial career, going on television after their break-up to reveal that he had left secret documents on her coffee table. The papers are described as Mr Bernier's classified “prep material” for last month's Nato summit in Bucharest.

“Maxime came to my place, and the document stayed there,” Ms Couillard told television viewers on Monday.

Mr Bernier, a Conservative MP from Quebec, had been derided by the Opposition for a series of foreign policy blunders since taking office in a Cabinet reshuffle in August. He got the name of the Haitian Prime Minister wrong in a parliamentary debate and was forced to retract a public call for the removal of the provincial governor of Kandahar in Afghanistan.

This month, he pledged to send a C17 cargo aircraft to help to airlift World Food Programme helicopters to cyclone-ravaged Burma, but Canada did not have any available and was forced to rent a Russian aircraft.

Mr Bernier, then Industry Minister, met Ms Couillard at a dinner party in Montreal last summer and within a month he had her listed as his official partner for travel funded by the taxpayer. He told her: “I can't switch girlfriends like I change shirts, so you have to be my official girlfriend for at least a year, in spite of what might happen between us.” She first attracted public attention when she accompanied him to his swearing-in as Foreign Minister wearing a low-cut dress.

She also caught the eye of President Bush at a reception in New York. As the couple approached, Mr Bush said: “Maxime, well, well, well, haven't you been keeping good company?”

Though apparently over, the relationship burst into the headlines again three weeks ago when Ms Couillard's ties to Montreal's violent biker gangs were exposed. She lived for three years with Gilles Giguère, a Montreal criminal who was gunned down in 1996 when he decided to become an informer. She then married Stéphane Sirois, an enforcer for a Hell's Angel-affiliate called the Rockers, who later testified against other bikers.

Ms Couillard said that she decided to speak out to reclaim her honour, insisting: “I am not a biker's chick.”

Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, had studiously ignored the controversy over Mr Bernier's relationship with Ms Couillard as a private matter. But he rushed to announce Mr Bernier's resignation before Ms Couillard's interview was broadcast, after learning of the document security breach.

“This is not to do with the minister's private life, or the life of a private citizen, 99 per cent of which I think is off bounds,” Mr Harper said. “I don't think it matters who a minister is dating,”

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