February 8, 2012

The Nannygate Great Makeover

Can Ruby Dhalla sparkle again?

Accused of exploiting and mistreating live-in caregivers and forced to resign her position as youth and multiculturalism critic, Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla has seen her fair share of adversity of late. A Parliamentary Commitee recently cleared Dhalla of the charges made against her, but the damage to her reputation has been done. Some continue to think her guilty. We asked: what can Ruby do to win back our hearts?

Paul Terefenko - News Writer, NOW magazine

It’s all about balance. She’s a politician in a position of trust and of public scrutiny. She’s got to go further with her response than someone who’s not. One thing she could do is create, donate to or support a workers’ rights monitoring group. A group like that may already exist, and if it does, she should put her support wholeheartedly behind it. She was the multiculturalism critic, right? She’s got to defeat the irony of these allegations. That’s the reality she has to face.

Shinan Govani - Writer, National Post

Start with a goodwill mission to the slums of Manila with professional do-gooder Craig Kielburger. Make sure photographers are present. Conversely, moving into that category marked “If-you-can’tbeat-’ em-join-’em,” I would humbly suggest she put out a fragrance — a Canadian first! Call it — what else? — Ruby!… Finally, doing a walk-on on Sesame Street never does hurt, does it?

Howard Levitt - Lawyer and counsel to Dhalla

She could take a mentorship role. She could also take a trip to the Philippines, and head or share a task force to report back on various issues.... Working toward getting more people like herself — women and visible minorities — into parliament might be a good idea and would help to get the word out there that these allegations were absolutely false and that she has been misrepresented.

David Eddie - Globe & Mail Columnist

Ruby Dhalla’s damage-control approach was confusingly twopronged: 1) her brother was responsible, so she had no knowledge of wrongdoing; 2) there was no wrongdoing. Which is it? Dhalla should focus on getting a single, clear message out there, and it helps if it’s the truth. The public can be surprisingly forgiving — as long as you don’t insult their intelligence. You have to be human, genuinely sorry and admit to the truth before you’re forced to. Coldness and evasiveness are not the ticket. Haughtiness can get you in even hotter water than ever, and hubris can turn a hotshot into an Icarus before you can say, “Hey, what happened to my wings?”

Erlinda Insigne - President Filipino-Canadian Association of Vaughan

I for one believe the testimony of the caregivers. If the Parliamentary Committee has cleared her, then I think she should be helping make changes to the live-in caregiver program. There are too many loopholes, people in other homes that are being mistreated. Many of them are Filipinos. Dhalla should work, federally, to improve the system. She said herself that her mother was also an immigrant, and she understands these problems. The system needs to be improved.

This article appears in the July 2009 issue of Post City Magazines

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