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Although it's proving his first major headache as leader, the Ruby Dhalla mess probably isn't enough to end Michael Ignatieff's prolonged honeymoon. But you have to wonder if it'll affect the recent courtship between the federal Conservatives and the Ontario Liberals.

At each other's throats until a few months ago, the two parties have become strange bedfellows - to the extent that John Baird, of all people, has been going out of his way to say nice things about Dalton McGuinty.

It's a relationship of mutual convenience, obviously. Ontario needs as much federal support as it struggles through the recession, and the province represents the only hope for Stephen Harper remaining in the Prime Minister's Office after the next election. But it's also produced some significant policy developments, among them the harmonized sales tax and a fairer distribution of federal seats.

If they didn't mention the provincial Liberals' role in the Dhalla scandal, though, then it would be considerably harder for the Conservatives to make it a Liberal (as opposed to a personal) matter. And so in Question Period today, the government used its allotted time for the following:

Mrs. Kelly Block (Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, CPC): Mr. Speaker, two weeks ago the Ontario minister of labour heard about the Liberal member for Brampton-Springdale's household paying live-in caregivers less than the minimum wage, confiscating their passports and forcing them to perform humiliating tasks not in their employment contract.

These are serious accusations. The Ontario minister of labour has admitted that he has been sitting on these allegations for two weeks, essentially protecting his federal Liberal cousins.

Will the Minister of State (Status of Women) tell the House what options are available to these female caregivers and others facing abuse? 

Hon. Helena Guergis (Minister of State (Status of Women), CPC): Mr. Speaker, the same labour standards protect all workers in Canada, whether they are foreign-born caregivers or not. If these caregivers were paid less than the Ontario minimum wage and provincial labour laws were violated, I do hope that the Ontario labour minister applies provincial labour laws consistently and does not give the federal Liberals any special treatment. ...

That's fair game. Although the provincial ministers' handling of the allegations against Dhalla may have been defensible in the procedural sense, they showed awfully poor political judgment. When serious complaints against a federal politician are brought directly to you by members of the public, you don't just tell the complainants to call a hotline and go on your merry way; at the very least, you flag the issue and place a priority on sorting it out.

That being said, you have to wonder if this aspect of the controversy wouldn't be better left in the hands of the provincial opposition (who've seized it with considerable gusto). If they could find ways to make the federal Liberals wear Dhalla's alleged misconduct without attacking a provincial government in the House of Commons, the Conservatives might help make that refreshingly harmonious federal-provincial relationship last a little longer.