Regardless, backed by the party machine and with endorsements from the likes of comedian Mike Bullard—a former patient—Dhalla cruised to victory, taking more than 47 per cent of the vote. Attractive, media-savvy, and youthful in a profession that is generally challenged on all three of those fronts, her future seemed bright. “I’ve sacrificed so much of my life, but it hasn’t seemed like a sacrifice,” she told a reporter. “I always had a love for federal politics and the Liberal party, so now I’m living my dream.”
Parliament Hill is a low-pay, long hours kind of place, at least for the staffers. The assistants and volunteers who do much of the grunt work associated with being a member of Parliament—dealing with correspondence, intervening with the bureaucracy on behalf of constituents, picking up the dry cleaning—are mostly young, enthusiastic and fiercely devoted to the party. Not so different than Dhalla herself. And that makes it all the more difficult to understand why the coolest chick on the West Block has such a bad reputation, crowned two years running by the Hill Times as the MP you would least like to work for. (A title, it should be noted, that is far more hotly contested than, say, best hair.)
“I took the job knowing about her reputation, but it was worse than I expected,” says one Liberal who has gone on to work for a different MP, and asked to remain anonymous. “She’s a very difficult person to work for. She’s a diva and she pays crap.”
Even some of the people who profess to have enjoyed their time with Dhalla use terms like “princess” and “cheapskate.” “She’s very tough. She’s very, very hard on her employees. She works them hard,” says another ex-staffer, who also asked not to be named. “But I learned not to take it personally. If I was there late at night, she was there too.”
Last summer, the story of a dispute between Dhalla and one of her staffers was the buzz of the Hill. When the man contracted mono and was forced to miss work for an extended period, the MP demanded that he resign. And when he refused, she fired him, according to the account, forcing him to launch an appeal to Human Resource Skills and Development Canada so that he might qualify for EI while at home recovering. The employee in question, who still works for the Liberals, confirmed the dispute, but declined to discuss it in detail. Dhalla asked Maclean’s to email her written questions about the dispute, but did not respond. Candice Debi, her director of communications, did not contradict the story, but suggested the former employee was unreliable: “You should look into his background.”
Others who have worked closely with the MP remain fiercely devoted. Mitch St. Pierre, an Ottawa filmmaker who is a long-time volunteer in Dhalla’s office, says she treats her employees like gold. “In all the years I’ve known Ruby, she’s never raised her voice. Not even once,” he says. “She’s not truly my boss. She’s more like family.” Andrew Lopez, a Toronto public relations specialist who has worked on Dhalla’s election campaigns, says he has always been impressed with her calm demeanour. “If anyone was the hard guy, it was me,” he says. “She was always decent to everybody.” And what is really remarkable, says Lopez, is the MP’s drive—during the campaign she would frequently work until the wee hours, then rise before dawn to start again.
In Ottawa, much of the midnight oil that Dhalla burns is spent trying to arrange visas for relatives of constituents (more than 25 per cent of Brampton-Springdale residents are of South Asian descent, according to the 2006 census). Keeping the riding happy is the part of the job at which Dhalla excels, say Hill watchers. But when it comes to relations with her fellow MPs, things don’t always go so smoothly. There is a certain amount of jealousy over her high profile. And caucus colleagues complain she doesn’t do her share of the heavy lifting on committees and within the party. Behind her back, some deride her as a lightweight, sarcastically invoking “Dr. Dhalla’s” chiropractic degree.
And whether or not a “conspiracy” exists, there is little question that individuals inside and outside the Liberal party have the knives out for the MP. When the Ottawa-based gossip magazine Frank was still publishing, Dhalla was a favourite target, with emails from her staff routinely leaked to its pages.
