Mr. Speaker, I thought he had retired.
The hon. member for Ottawa South was offered this spot but refused to go because he assumed there would be another leadership convention after the upcoming election. He figured it would be better to plot here in the capital than to be run out of the country by a dictatorial Prime Minister who knows no compassion when it comes to dealing with his rivals.
Rather than trying to insinuate something that is not, the government should also know that loading up ambassadorial postings with Liberal Party hacks is causing a morale problem with our foreign service. Many retired heads of missions look back nostalgically on the days when promotions were made on the basis of merit and Canada was a leader in diplomacy.
There was a time when the Canadian foreign service attracted the brightest and the best. Nothing can be more insulting than spending 30 or 35 years in the foreign service and then getting squeezed out on the basis of not what one knows but who one knows.
We enjoyed a good reputation around the world. Canada's role has been marginalized by an indifferent government that rarely backs up words with action. Denmark was so insulted when the government dumped Alfonso Gagliano in their country as ambassador that it responded by invading Canada and claiming a piece of our territory in the high Arctic.
While Canadians were asking what the Danes did to deserve this kind of treatment, the Danes were busy raising their flag on Canadian soil. No wonder the Danes acted the way they did.