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Mr. Fowler spent a dozen years in the Department of External Affairs, serving in Paris, at the United Nations, and at headquarters in Ottawa, before being transferred to the Privy Council Office where he was the Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Ministers Trudeau, Turner, and Mulroney from 1980 to 1986. Mr. Fowler was Assistant Deputy Minister (Policy) at the Department of National Defence from 1986 to 1989, during which time he produced three White Papers on Canadian Defence Policy, and served as Deputy Minister of National Defence from 1989 to 1995. From 2001 to 2006, he was the Personal Representative for Africa of Prime Ministers Chrétien, Martin and briefly, Harper. In July 2008, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, appointed Mr. Fowler to be his Special Envoy to Niger, with the rank of Under-Secretary-General. While acquitting his UN mission in 2008, Mr. Fowler and his colleague, Louis Guay, were captured by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and held hostage in the Sahara Desert for 130 days.