OTTAWA - You can't swing a dead cat around Parliament Hill, or even within the prime minister's office, without hitting a former staff member of Helena Guergis.
Caucus colleagues have for years traded tales of staff allegedly coming in for harangues from the junior minister -- and should have tipped the boss that trouble could loom ahead.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper ousted her from the Conservative government on Friday and called in the Mounties and the Commons ethics commissioner to investigate unnamed allegations against Guergis.
The move came after the Toronto Star published a report last week that alleged her husband Rahim Jaffer had been bragging to business associates that he could open doors for them in the halls of power.
Jaffer had been sending emails using one of Guergis's parliamentary Blackberries address after he had been defeated as an MP in 2008. Her spokesman last week said that was consistent with each parliamentarian being given up to five hand-held devices to use as they saw fit.
Guergis told The Canadian Press on Sunday that she had taken steps to expedite the investigation.
"After speaking with the Prime Minister, I contacted both the Ethics Commissioner and the RCMP to tell them directly that I would co-operate fully in any investigation they launched and asked only one thing: that these allegations -- which are both unfair and untrue -- be dealt with as quickly as due process will allow," Guergis wrote in an email.
Neither Guergis nor Harper's office would expand on what the allegations entailed.
Another figure at the centre of the scandal, Toronto businessman Nazim Gillani, put out a statement Sunday calling allegations against him "misleading and wrong." The Star story said Gillani was under investigation for fraud, and had told his associates in an email that Jaffer would assist them in accessing help within the prime minister's office.
"I urge all interested media following my story to carefully examine the reporting, sources/attribution, and fact-checking of Mr. (Kevin) Donovan's articles instead of merely copying and accepting them at face value," Gillani said, adding that he would fully respond to the issue after April 21.
News of Guergis' fall from grace came of little surprise to members of Harper's government -- and for good reason.
Over the years, a virtual army of Conservative staffers had moved in and out of her employ, sometimes following emotional clashes.
"The sad reality is those of us who were working with her knew there were problems -- folks in the PMO didn't want to know about it," said one former staffer, who spoke to The Canadian Press on condition of anonymity.
"When she got into trouble she surrounded herself with sycophants....Staff who stood up to her quit or were fired."
The ex-staffer added that Guergis was a hard worker, who was committed to her ministerial files.
Guergis said on late Sunday that she could not immediately respond to those criticisms.
Currently, there are at least two former Guergis staffers working directly within Harper's offices, Sally Harris and Emily Goucher. Goucher joined the PMO only a few weeks ago, after handling the media fallout from the much publicized temper tantrum at the Charlottetown airport in February.
Guergis' last chief of staff, Neil Brodie, was brother to Harper's former chief of staff Ian Brodie. Others who have left now occupy senior posts in ministerial offices: Stephanie Machel is chief of staff to International Development Minister Bev Oda, and Phil Welford is chief of staff to junior minister Gary Goodyear.
Another former Guergis office assistant, Wendy Noble, is now an assistant to Tory MP John Weston.
The source said anyone who worked with Guergis knew about her extremely close relationship to her husband.
Guergis would co-ordinate her official schedule around that of her husband, and the two would do virtually everything together including travel. Last year, they both completed MBA degrees at the same time, the source said.
"There were absolutely no secrets between the two of them, none," said the source.
And Conservative sources said that Guergis' clashes with staff were legendary, and even sometimes embroiled the prime minister's office.
In one incident in 2008, when she was the secretary of state for Foreign Affairs, Guergis flew to Mexico for a cocktail reception with expatriates and diplomats without getting the OK from Harper's office. The trip created a controversy afterwards because Guergis failed to visit a Canadian languishing nearby in a Mexican jail. Harper's office was not pleased.
Despite that high-profile gaffe and problems with staff, Harper kept her in the next cabinet shuffle and gave her the status of women portfolio.
The opposition parties say they will not let the matter go, even if Harper plans to punt all questions to the tight lipped RCMP.
"This has become a debilitating distraction and its important for the business of the country that the prime minister get it as far off the table as possible, and the only way to do that is by full disclosure...and then get in back in Parliament to tackling the business that we're there to do," NDP Leader Jack Layton told The Canadian Press Sunday.
