Angry in the Great White North

Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla
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Part of the allegations swirling around Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla is the question of Richelyn Tongson's passport:

According to Tongson, Ruby Dhalla demanded and took all her personal documents, including her passport, birth certificate and marriage certificate, saying she needed them to fill out the application to hire her as a live-in caregiver.

Tongson said she grew concerned as weeks passed without her documents or work authorization materializing. She turned to Intercede, the agency that helps foreign workers. Intercede called Ruby Dhalla's office in Ottawa. According to Tongson, Dhalla flew home from Ottawa the next day. Tongson said the documents were left on the kitchen counter after Tavinder Dhalla had her sign a handwritten note saying she had given the documents to Neil Dhalla, and she could have had them back at any time.

Tongson signed the letter.

Reporter Dael Brazao had confronted Ruby Dhalla about the passport issue.  Her response, through her lawyer John Kalina, was that they had a handwritten note from Tongson denying that this had happened.  I guess we can infer that Brazao took that back to Tongson, who explained that the note had been coerced (or perhaps Brazao already knew of Tongson's allegation about being told to sign this letter before he contacted Dhalla).

I have to say that the letters themselves sound, well, weird.  First of all, why get a letter?  When I was in a similar situation, I was given the passport, made the copies, and returned the passport that evening.  But at the Dhalla household, that sort of informality just didn't cut it, it seems.

Here is the letter that was allegedly written when Tongson lent her passport to be photocopied:

I Richelyn Tongson am working as housekeeper at 1078 Haydonbridge Court Mississauga ON L5V 1JA.  I gave them my papers and passport to Dr Neil Dhalla for apply sponsorship with my own wishes and I can take my papers back any time when ever I want.

They are paying me 500.00 after every two weeks on 15th and 30th of every month 

They apply for my papers.  They said if I want to stay I can stay.  If I want to go I can go.  I can feel free to go anytime.  But they apply for my sponsorship.

[signed]

The letter is not dated.  That itself is interesting because the second letter that marks the return of the documents is not just dated, but timestamped!

I received my passport and all my papers back on May 29 08 7:20 pm from Dr Neil Dhalla. 

[signed] 7:15pm

Yes, Tongson wrote the time beside her signature as 7:15pm, five minutes before she apparently got the documents in her hands at 7:20pm.

I suppose it could just be an innocent mistake.  Maybe she was nervous.  Nervous?  I can't be alone in getting that vibe from these letters.

I mean, who writes a letter to act as a receipt for a passport being borrowed for the purposes of making a copy, and then goes at length about how regularly the payments are going to be and how free that person is to quit any time they feel like it? 

It's like someone wanted to make sure all the bases were covered by the letter.  The documents are being offered willingly.  Check.  The nanny is being paid regularly.  Check.  The nanny feels free to quit any time.  Check.

And what day was that, by the way?  That first letter is missing the exact date and time, to the minute, that appears in the second letter, the one that was written, according to Tongsen, under duress as the Dhalla's responded to the probing by Intercede.

One thing that does not appear in the reports so far is an explanation from Tongsen about why the first letter seemed to go at length about her working arrangement when the letter was supposed to be simply a receipt for the documents being borrowed.  We need to know when this first letter was written, what purpose it was supposed to serve (a simple receipt or more), and under what circumstances it was written.

Back to the future: I have to go back to those timestamps.  Why does the second letter say that the documents were returned at 7:20pm when Tongsen dates the time of her signature at 7:15pm?  That bothers me the more I think about it.  Why bother with timestamps in the first place, and then why get them backward?