showing in the 2008 federal election, and Dhalla was mentioned as a possible candidate to succeed him. The Toronto Star listed her as an outside contender, noting that her national profile was not very strong. Before she was able to make her decision, other prominent candidates withdrew from the contest and gave their support to Michael Ignatieff. In December, Dhalla announced she would not be a candidate. Ignatieff was duly acclaimed as interim leader in January 2009, and was officially confirmed as party leader later in the year. In January 2009, Ignatieff appointed Dhalla as the Liberal critic for Youth and Multiculturalism. In a 2008 poll of parliamentary staffers from the Hill Times, Dhalla was voted the second-sexiest female MP, while that year Maxim magazine ranked her third in "The World's Hottest Politicians".The Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente has described Dhalla as unpopular among her colleagues in the Liberal parliamentary caucus, where she is viewed as a "high maintenance" self-promoter. In a survey of parliamentary staffers from the Hill Times, Dhalla was voted the worst MP to work for, and the pollsters suggested that she had "more [staff] turnover than anyone on the hill". In 2007, an investigation was launched by Service Canada investigators regarding allegations Dhalla made in the process of her decision to terminate the employment of a Parliamentary staffer. The investigation noted that while the staffer was on medical leave, Dhalla claimed the staffer was not actually ill, however the investigation concluded that in spite of multiple requests for evidence to substantiate her claims, the investigator was given no evidence from Dhalla, and considerable evidence to the contrary had been presented. This led the investigator to formally warn Dhalla that she would be personally responsible for any legal costs incurred as a result of the wrongful termination. A few weeks prior, while speaking in her role as the Liberal Party’s official Opposition Critic for Service Canada, Dhalla chastised the Conservative government’s policies at a Parliamentary committee meeting reviewing the employment insurance system — specifically speaking about weaknesses being exploited by employers who wrongfully terminate employees. Dhalla was also said to be more interested in the limelight than in doing parliamentary work, with a former caucus colleague saying "It's everything starting with making sure she's in every photo-op with the leader. I often hear of events where she calls the organizers and says 'I want to speak,'