Doing what good journalists are supposed to do: Though we've had this letter since yesterday, we did our due diligence today, checking its bona fides which, as it turns out, are both bona and fide. As a result, my colleague Juliet O'Neill is able to update an earlier post here and report that:
A distraught 81-year-old Filipina is accusing embattled Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla (left) of “taking advantage” of her to falsely claim the support of the Brampton Filipino Seniors Club.
“They took my signature,” Aurora Villanueva, 2007-2008 president of the Ontario club, said in an interview Thursday. “I need to clear my name. I don't want to die with a black mark on my name.”
Ms. Villanueva says she wrote a letter on May 13th to the Commons immigration committee retracting a May 7th letter that said Ms. Dhalla had been “unjustly smeared” by allegations of mistreating caregivers, had a character of the highest integrity and had the support of the club.
Ms. Dhalla “took advantage of my being an old lady and being friendly” to secure her signature on a prepared letter a Ms. Dhalla representative brought to her home two weeks ago, when she was ill and unaware of the caregivers' allegations, she said.