OTTAWA (AFP) - Canada's opposition parties on Thursday assailed Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier over his ex-girlfriend's former romantic ties to bikers, alleging possible security breaches.

Bernier was pressed about his ex's alleged past and whether the prime minister or the Privy Council Office had had any reservations over his former companion Julie Couillard.

Couillard, 38, accompanied Bernier at his swearing-in as foreign minister in 2007, and while they dated, she was officially designated as Bernier's "spouse" so she could travel with him on government business.

The pair broke up some months ago, said the daily Globe and Mail, citing unnamed sources, but dined with Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and his wife at an Ottawa restaurant as recently as late March.

According to reports, Bernier did not know about her past until it was reported by the media.

On Thursday, he dismissed questioning about her in the House of Commons, as a "nasty and low attack."

"This concerns my private life, the private life and past of my former girlfriend, and the private lives of people are none of your business," he said.

Couillard was said to have been a target for assassination by the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, and once dated a biker who was later killed in a gangland slaying in 1996.

The following year, Couillard wed a member of a biker gang closely affiliated with the Hells Angels, who would become a police informant and testify in 2003 about an alleged hit planned on her by Hells Angels kingpin in Quebec, Maurice Boucher. The couple divorced in 1999.

Couillard, a Montreal realtor, told the Globe and Mail: "Some people are after Maxime Bernier and it's my name that'll be dragged in the mud."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, meanwhile, voiced support for Bernier, saying: "I hear that one of my cabinet ministers has an ex-girlfriend. It's none of my business. It's none of (the opposition)'s business."

Opposition leaders, he told reporters, were being "gossipy old busybodies."

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