Mr. Speaker, Bob Fowler and his family go way back with the Prime Minister and the Liberal Party. It all started in the seventies when young Fowler was a protégé of the Prime Minister's friends, Mitchell Sharp and Pierre Trudeau. During this time he got to know the little guy from Shawinigan. He has known him ever since.
Moreover, Bob Fowler's sister married another good friend and patronage appointee of the Prime Minister, Roméo LeBlanc, the Governor General of Canada. Let us not forget Mr. Fowler's wife who was a senior bureaucrat in the office of another friend of the PM, André Ouellet, who was the Minister of Foreign Affairs until he also got his Liberal patronage plum as head of the post office.
Then it was Fowler's turn. Just when the Somalia affair threatened to engulf him, whoosh, he was swept off to become ambassador of the UN thanks to the Prime Minister's patronage.
I do not think the Prime Minister is fooling anyone. He protected his friend from the Somalia affair and on that the record it is very clear.