Canada: The Talk of Ottawa

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Canada's Progressive Conservative government was briefly rocked last week by what passes in Ottawa, apparently, for a sex scandal. Defense Minister Robert Coates, 56, resigned after a local newspaper reported that he might have breached national security last November by spending two hours in a seedy striptease bar in Lahr, West Germany.

The tizzy began when the Ottawa Citizen ran a story saying that Coates and two aides, in Europe on a NATO tour, had stopped off at the nightclub, where Coates, it appears, did no more than have a drink at the bar and chat with one of the strippers. Nonetheless, the Citizen quoted an unnamed former Canadian intelligence source to the effect that the visit might have jeopardized the Minister's top-security status.

Hours after the story appeared, Coates resigned his portfolio while denouncing portions of the Citizen account as "wrong and libelous." For his part, a grim-faced Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said that Coates' error of judgment was one that "you or I or any other imperfect human being could make."